Priest unearths forgotten chapter of Holocaust

San Francisco - Auschwitz. Treblinka. Birkenau. Names etched forever into the consciousness of a world reeling from the horror of the Holocaust. Around six million died as a direct result of the Nazi' s planned extermination of the Jewish people.

But before the death camps, before the gas chambers, before the crematoria, before the mechanization of mass murder, the killing took place face - to - face. Between 1941 and 1944, in the villages and towns of Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Western Russia, mobile death squads called Einsatzgruppen slaughtered Jews by the thousands. All told, an estimated 1.5 million perished, fully one - quarter of all Jews killed during the period of genocide.

The Einsatzgruppen buried the bodies in mass graves and strove to remove all evidence. After the war, tensions between the West and the Soviets, along with Soviet anti - Semitism and the unique history of the genocide, conspired to prevent the knowledge of Nazi atrocities from reaching the outside world.

Thanks in part to the efforts of French diocesan priest Father Patrick Desbois, the story of one of the earliest and least - known chapters of Holocaust history is being told. While visiting San Francisco for a talk on his new book, " The Holocaust by Bullets," the priest spoke with Catholic San Francisco about his investigation.

" War is never finished until we bury the last victim," Father Desbois said, quoting a Russian proverb. " But time is against us. We have to pass from Poland to Ossetia. It' s the whole continent. It' s like if you say there are mass killings from New York to San Francisco, and you have five years to find all the mass graves. There are mass graves in almost every village."

Father Desbois' fascination with the Holocaust began in childhood. Born after the war, the priest heard stories about the hard times faced by his family and all of France during the Nazi occupation. His grandfather had been among 25,000 French classified as political enemies and deported to a prison camp near Rawa - Ruska, a Ukrainian town on the border with Poland.

" He didn' t want to speak of that," Father Desbois said. Still, as a young boy the priest was ever curious about what had happened to his grandfather at the camp. Finally, his grandfather gave him a cryptic answer. " He told me, ' In the camp it was awful, but outside the camp it was worse.' " In 1990, the priest visited Poland to organize a pilgrimage of students to meet Pope John Paul II in Czechoslovakia. While traveling in the countryside near the Ukrainian border, he lost his way. Remarkably, he was not far from Rawa - Ruska.

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Thus began a period of intense study in Holocaust history. The priest wanted to know what had happened outside his grandfather' s camp. He learned Hebrew, and traveled to Israel to study at the University of Jerusalem and at Yad Vashem, the Israeli national Holocaust memorial. He later visited the sites of death camps across Eastern Europe.

In 2002, he returned to Ukraine to uncover the truth about genocide there. Piecing together accounts from post - war Soviet archives, testimony from villagers who witnessed the killings, and ballistic evidence recovered from the sites of mass graves, the priest began to realize the horrifying scope of the massacre. " Some 46,000 Jews were killed and buried in what is now a park," the priest said. " Jews are buried in the landscape as if they never existed."

Though the perpetrators attempted to cover up evidence of the atrocities, certain conclusions are inescapable. Jews were rounded up in full view of their Christian neighbors and friends. In some cases, they were shot in remote locations, but fearing ambush in the forest, the Germans often killed the Jews in or just outside town. This meant many people witnessed the killings and mass burials.

Germans also requisitioned locals to dig graves, to guard Jews awaiting execution, to sort stolen Jewish clothing and valuables, and even to prepare banquets at the site of the executions.

The priest said lending a non - judgmental ear to these aging and often guilt - ridden survivors has been an important part of uncovering the truth. The Germans would often force the locals to participate in ways both large and small, and locals had good reason to believe non - cooperation would lead to their own deaths.

In his book, Father Desbois related the story of one witness who said a villager had been forced to play a drum to drown out the screams of the victims. After days of witnessing the murders, he saw a German beating Jewish children. He threw himself at the German.

" The drummer had not been able to take it any longer," Father Desbois wrote. The soldier shot him and threw his body into the pit with the Jews.

Ukrainian witnesses told the priest they saw Jewish children thrown alive into the pits and buried by the bodies of adults and by mounds of earth and rock. In one town, Jews were forced alive into a cave and shut in, left to die of painful dehydration.

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Jews were generally shot only once, to save bullets, so many were still alive when graves were covered. The priest said witnesses told him the graves moved for three days, with still - living victims fighting a losing battle to escape death.

" The most luscious green landscapes became extermination camps, and Ukrainian children became the hired hands of death," Father Desbois wrote in " The Holocaust by Bullets."

" The landscape, the buildings and the children became, in the hands of the assassins, tools to exterminate the people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," he said.

By Jewish law, the remains of the victims are not to be disturbed, but in order to obtain corroboratory evidence, Father Desbois' group was granted the right to excavate one site in Busk, Ukraine. Done under the supervision of Orthodox rabbinical authorities, the dig uncovered an estimated 150 separate remains. Afterward, the site was covered with a special cement to prevent looting, and the rabbi present said a prayer over the grave. By recording the testimony of those who witnessed the genocide, the priest is aiding researchers chronicling these first stages of the Holocaust. Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., told Catholic San Francisco the priest' s work is opening a window to the past once thought to be boarded up.

" The Holocaust was a Jewish tragedy with universal implications that took place on a Christian continent," Shapiro said. " To really understand what the loss is, and what the implications are, it requires that Jews and Christians work together."

To that end, Father Desbois formed the Yahad - In Unum Association, dedicated to researching the Holocaust in every village along the Eastern Front. The priest acknowledges the task is enormous, but vows to end his search only when there are no more living witnesses.

Shapiro' s group and other organizations, both Jewish and Christian, have set up funds to help finance the work. With witnesses dying of old age, he hopes both religious traditions will come together quickly to aid Yahad - In Unum.

Ultimately, Father Desbois said the task is not just about uncovering the past, but about making sure future generations recognize and fight against genocidal hatred. The priest said racially - motivated killings will always resurface because people are sinful. Only by studying the example of the Holocaust, does the priest believe humanity can learn how to confront that sin when it appears.

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" We cannot give posthumous victory to Nazism," Father Desbois wrote. " We cannot leave the Jews buried like animals. We cannot accept this state of affairs and allow our continent to be built on the obliterated memory of the victims of the Reich."

For more information, visit www.yahadinunum.org/index.en.html

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This story was made available to Catholic Online by permission of Catholic San Francisco (www.catholic-sf.org),official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Calif.