If you’re reading this issue of the newsletter online, you’ve probably already noticed a new look to the
The European Union, led by its Directorate General for Education and Culture, has been providing increasing support for Yahad’s education and research efforts. In addition to the International Holocaust Symposium in Romania (see story below), specific programs that the EU is helping make possible include the July seminar for European high school teachers at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the 
In May, Father Desbois received an honorary doctorate at the commencement exercises of Yeshiva University in New York, in recognition of Yahad – In Unum’s ongoing work to identify the mass graves of victims of the Holocaust by bullets. The university is a center for modern Jewish Orthodoxy and has long been a leading voice on behalf of promoting dialogue between the Jewish and Catholic communities. Yeshiva University is one of the places most visited by French Catholic Cardinals Jean Marie Lustiger and by Cardinal Andre Vingt Trois, and a destination to which delegations of Catholic bishops are invited each year.
Yahad will cosponsor the international symposium, “Mass Graves of the Holocaust,” in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of this month with the Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the European Union. The symposium follows the commemoration of the 1941 Iaşi Pogrom and the recent discovery of a mass grave by a team of archaeologists and historians from the Wiesel Institute near the town of Popricani. The symposium will bring together scholars of mass killings in Eastern Europe documented by the three sponsoring organizations to discuss the discovery of such sites, the spectrum of victims of these massacres and the legal, social, and ethical implications of the investigation of mass graves in Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe.
| ASF German volunteer delegation visits Yahad’s offices |
A recent visit to Yahad’s offices in Paris by a delegation of German youths from Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace) was part of the 50th anniversary of the volunteer services organization. ASF offers young Germans the possibility to work on behalf of peace in countries involved in World War II, including several European countries, Israel and the U.S. Volunteer activities include visiting survivors of the Holocaust, working with refugees and homeless people, helping former slave laborers in their old age and working in schools and shelters for children with disabilities. Yahad has its own special connection with ASF: for the past three years, volunteers from the group have worked with the Yahad team in Paris assisting with research and translations of the archival records used in field investigations. The delegation, composed of current and past volunteers, heard from several Yahad team members during their visit about various aspects of the investigative work conducted both on the ground in Eastern Europe and through archival research in Paris, Germany and Washington.| Meet Team Yahad Each month, we profile one of the dedicated team members who help make the work of Yahad – In Unum possible. |
| ASF German volunteer delegation visits Yahad’s offices |
| Meet Team Yahad Each month, we profile one of the dedicated team members who help make the work of Yahad – In Unum possible. |
Since September, Moritz Rehm has been working full-time at Yahad under ASF’s volunteer program (see article above). The German-born student, fluent in German, French and English, works with Yahad’s team in Paris, researching documents from the German archives, translating and helping to respond to requests for information from the families of Holocaust victims. He says that, as a pacifist, he was drawn to Yahad’s work and the opportunity to serve society through an intercultural organization performing historical educational work about the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. “As a European, three generations after the Second World War, I feel a sense of responsibility to help people clearly understand the reasons behind the exclusion and the crimes of unimaginable horror that occurred and the need to reject prejudice, racism and discrimination.” Moritz is one of 180 young German volunteers working for social and educational organizations around the world this year.