Yahad - In Unum

“No.18 August 2011″

Follow Yahad research trips through daily blog reports in August

Daily reports from Yahad research trips to continue the investigation of the Jews and Roma Holocaust victims are being published on Yahadblog beginning July 29. connect to Yahadblog
Help! Au secours! ¡Socorro! Dopomožiť! Pomocy! Pomogite! Hilfe !

Translators needed

Are you looking for a volunteer opportunity to put your foreign language skills at the service of an urgent cause?  Yahad – In Unum is actively looking for speakers of foreign languages, particularly Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and Polish to help us cope with the increasing number of testimonies recorded during our research.  If interested, please contact Patrice Bensimon at p.bensimon@yahadinunum.org.

Thanks! Merci! Gracias! Diakuju! Dzięki! Spasiba! Danke!

 

Romania’s Holocaust history a subject at conference

The precedent set of publicly witnessed pogroms in Romania for the Holocaust by bullets was among the topics presented at an international conference last month in Bucharest. Presenters said that the June 1941 pogrom in the city of Iasi in which nearly 15,000 Jews were killed was important in the history of the Holocaust. “It was a mass killing that took place in view of the public. It established to the Germans that it was possible to murder people in front of their neighbors, a method subsequently repeated in other Eastern European countries,” said Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Studies at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Speakers also called on European authorities to protect the hundreds of mass graves scattered around Eastern Europe. “We cannot build Europe and democracy upon the mass graves of forgotten victims,” said Father Desbois. “We have a duty to victims because each and every one of them had a name.” Survivors and descendants of Jews killed during the Iasi pogrom also attended ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
Monash University invites high-level Holocaust scholars in Australia

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 yearAmong several scholars of the Holocaust and genocide invited in June by the Monash University, Father Desbois participated in the “Politics of Memory” conference in Melbourne, Australia. The three-day conference gathered several scholars including:

• Dr. Dawn Casey, Director of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and former Director of the National Museum of Australia.
• Professor Raimond Gaita, Foundation Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University and Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College, London
• Professor Jan T. Gross, Professor of History at Princeton University
• Professor Dovid Katz, Vilnius University, and Research Director at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Lithuania
• Professor Laura Levitt, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Temple University
• Dr. Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, creator of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda.
 
 
During the trip, Father Desbois also met with professor Konrad Kweit at the Sydney Jewish Museum, who had served on an international research team that had been sent to Serniki in the Rivne region of Ukraine to conduct an exhumation of a mass grave as part of a war crimes trial brought against former Nazis living in Australia. Yahad – In Unum has previously conducted an investigation of the village in which the shootings had taken place and n interview with a witness who had been requisitioned to dig this same mass grave is part of Yahad’s video records. Professor Kweit provided Yahad with archival information regarding the investigation of the mass grave by the Australian authorities.
Anne Frank House in partnership with Yahad – In Unum for the second European teachers’ seminar

With the support of the European Commission, European, high school teachers from 14 countries participated in this year’s seminar, “Teaching the Holocaust by bullets,” designed to help educators present the subject to their students. The two-day seminar in Amsterdam was organized by Yahad – In Unum in partnership with the Anne Frank House, a world-renowned organization dedicated to encouraging reflection on the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination and the importance of freedom, equal rights and democracy. The annual seminar helps high school history teachers deepen their knowledge and comprehension of the process of the extermination of Jewish, Roma and other victims in Eastern Europe during the World War II. Ten lecturers covered topics ranging from working with archival materials to Jewish religious law and the protection of mass graves. The presentations included an interview with a Ukrainian eyewitness to mass shootings and a panel discussion on the genocide of the Roma.


Spanish delegation visits Yahad
A delegation of leaders of Spain’s Protestant community visited Yahad last month as part of a program to increase understanding of the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. 

The visit, organized by the Spanish foreign ministry’s Casa Sefarad-Israel, was part of a five-day visit in France to study the Holocaust which also included presentations at the Shoah Memorial and trips to Montelimar, Dieulefit and Rivesaltes. During the visit to Yahad, Executive Director, Marco Gonzalez, and other team members briefed the delegation members on the history of the Holocaust beyond the concentration camps and Yahad’s research methods and results.
Magazine recounts WWII history, day-by-day
An article on the Holocaust by Bullets, written by Yahad team member, Marie Moutier, has been published in the French WWII history magazine, “Histoire de la dernière guerre”. The article is part of a series that provides day-to-day coverage of the events 70 years after the war.
Upcoming public events
París – Symposium with the Sorbonne, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Ecole Normale Superieure and the European Union on Nazi camps in the Soviet Union, September 19-20
more information 

read more about daily Yahad activities on Yahadblog

read recent press articles about Yahad-In Unum

read past issues of Yahad-In Unum News

send your comments about Yahad–In Unum News