Overview

Between 1941 and 1944, almost 1.5 million Jews were massacred when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In two and half years, the Nazis killed nearly every Jew in the region. The mass murder was part of the Holocaust, Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people. Until recently, this chapter of Holocaust history was relatively unknown.

The Nazis conducted the majority of their killing by deporting Jews to death camps, located mostly in Western Europe. In the Soviet Union, however, the murder was local. Because of the region’s inadequate railway systems, the Nazis were unable to easily transport the Jews to the camps. Instead, mobile execution units known as Einsatzgruppen gathered, shot and killed the Jews on their home soil. Villages became execution sites and villagers became witnesses.

After the executions, the Nazis buried their victims in mass ditches and continued on to another village. With bodies and bullets beneath the ground, the perperators left behind little indication of what had occurred. Knowledge of the murder was limited mostly to the Nazis and the villagers that had been forced to watch. Traumatized and fearful, few of these witnesses spoke about what they had seen.

Because of their silence and the lack of visible evidence, there existed little record of the mass murder that occurred until recently. The Einsatzgruppen were tried in the Einsatzgruppen Nuremberg Trials, and later in the Federal Republic of Germany, but a comprehensive understanding of the massacre was never achieved. Many remained unaware that it had even taken place.

In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois initiated an effort to thoroughly detail the nearly forgotten history of the genocide. In his ongoing efforts, Father Desbois asks the aging witnesses to share their memories and videotapes their testimony. With their help, he is able to locate the evidence that validates historical fact and helps fill in the gaps in this chapter of the Holocaust. His goal is to identify and record each site of mass execution of Jews, Roma and other victims, to make sure that their traces do not disappear from the earth and that they are respectfully memorialized. Yahad’s work aims to contribute to awareness and understanding of the “Holocaust by Bullets,” and to the prevention of genocide.

An Urgent Cause:

The surviving witnesses are in their late 70’s and early 80’s, and their first-person accounts of history will soon no longer be available. The window of opportunity to collect the evidence is rapidly closing. Without eyewitness testimony, it will be impossible to identify the location of the mass graves and collect the evidence of the genocide.