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On behalf of all of the team at Yahad – In Unum, please accept our best wishes for the holiday season to you, your families and all who are dear to you.
In 2011, Yahad continued to progress in its research and educational activities. Research teams conducted 14 trips throughout the year, videotaping interviews with more than 500 elderly witnesses to the Holocaust by bullets. In Paris, Washington, Poland and Germany, our researchers continued their work of poring over the German, Polish and Soviet archives, translating thousand more pages of records to prepare our field investigations as well as adding to the historical records available for additional research. Yahad also continued its investigation into the history of the Roma during the war, conducting research trips in Romania and Moldova and creating a new partnership with other Roma associations.
We also built on our public education efforts, through a series of programs and presentations. The second seminar for European high school teachers was held in partnership with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and we published a curriculum kit designed to help educators teach the history of the Holocaust by Bullets. The UN published a discussion paper by Father Desbois, distributed to schools throughout the world. In Ukraine, Yahad worked with an educational association to produce a Ukrainian-language teaching module on the subject, which was introduced at the opening of the Holocaust by Bullets exhibition in Kiev, a first in Eastern Europe. Seminars during the year included our Thursday’s at CERRESE series, a lecture program on “Writing the History of the Holocaust,” an international symposium looking at Nazi camps on Soviet territories and Holocaust conferences in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Superieure. Members of the team continued to make presentations to students, including an ongoing lecture series in French schools and other schools and universities throughout the world.
In March, we organized an educational trip open to members of the public to the extermination camps in Auschwitz and Belzec, to Krakow and the mass graves of Rava Ruska. An English-language version of the program is planned for next summer. We also continued our close partnership the on numerous subjects, including a new cooperative initiative with the American Jewish Committee to support their efforts to protect mass grave sites. And, of course, we continue to welcome numerous individual visitors to our research center in Paris, including family members of victims and scholars.
As we build on the past work, thanks to the commitment of our team, the efforts of our volunteers and the support of individuals and organizations around the world, I would like to express our gratitude for your continued support and to wish you the very best for 2012.
Kindest regards,
Marco Gonzalez, Executive Director
Father Desbois and the Caen Memorial’s Stephane Grimaldi listen to Alice Greenwald of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum describe plans for the continuing development of the site during a visit. The 2/26/93 date on the work helmets refers to the date of an earlier terrorist bombing attack at the World Trade Center that killed six people and injured thousands, victims who also are remembered at the site.
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Each month, we profile one of the dedicated team members who help make the work of Yahad – In Unum possible.
A native of Agen in France’s Lot et Garonne region, Marie-Lise Bargues has worked with Yahad as a writer and assisting with official correspondence for three years but she has known Father Desbois since well before the association was created. A student of theatre studies and medicine in school, Marie-Lise also is actively involved in theatre, writing and staging plays on a regular basis. Her studies also included Greek and Latin and she today is studying Hebrew. She says that she feels drawn to Yahad’s mission by her personal faith and her abhorrence of injustice and discrimination. “In my family, we were brought up to recognize, and honor what differentiates us as human beings and it grieves me to see suffering inflicted upon anyone. Working for Yahad provides me the opportunity to combat this pain and anguish by working on behalf of peace, brotherhood and the protection of memory to make our shared conviction of ‘never again’ a reality.”
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Father Desbois and the Caen Memorial’s Stephane Grimaldi listen to Alice Greenwald of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum describe plans for the continuing development of the site during a visit. The 2/26/93 date on the work helmets refers to the date of an earlier terrorist bombing attack at the World Trade Center that killed six people and injured thousands, victims who also are remembered at the site.
