Auschwitz epitomized the systematic and mechanized murder of Jews perfected by the Nazis. But for millions of victims living in the Ukraine, Russia and other eastern states, death was up close and personal. This was a “Holocaust by bullets,” to use the description of Father Patrick Desbois, who has researched and documented hundreds of mass graves in the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. In towns and villages,  next to train stations and in forests, Einsatzgruppen (SS paramilitary death squads), together with Wehrmacht and German police, as well as local collaborators’ units murdered their Jewish victims one by one, shot them in pitches and threw them in mass gravesites. The Einsatzgruppen also murdered Roma, Soviet communists, Polish victims and other targets of the Nazi regime.

Today, these unmarked gravesites are largely forgotten, exposed to the natural elements and desecrated by grave diggers seeking items of value. Yahad–In Unum, the Paris-based organization headed by Father Patrick Desbois, is working in close cooperation with the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum against time and fading memories, to research and document these sites. To date, Yahad–In Unum has identified approximately four hundred sites of killing, with more than a thousand mass graves on the killing fields. Hundreds of other sites have yet to be documented.

An international initiative of prominent organizations and individuals has been launched by the American Jewish Committee and Yahad–In Unum to locate, protect, seal and memorialize mass gravesites of Holocaust victims. Sixty-five years after the end of the war, it is time to complete work on this sacred task.

Welcoming Remarks by Deidre Berger

The international initiative was presented at a press conference at the American Jewish Committee Berlin Office on Wednesday January 20th, 2010. Statements were made by the following people:

Deidre Berger, AJC Ramer Institute of German-Jewish Relations, Berlin

Rabbiner Andrew Baker, American Jewish Committee, Washington D.C.

Pater Patrick Desbois, Yahad–In Unum, Paris

Stephan J. Kramer, Central Council of Jews in Germany, Berlin

Reinhard Führer, German War Graves Commission, Berlin

Philip Carmel, Lo Tishkach, Brussels

Rabbiner Yaakov Dov Beich, Chief Rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine

Botschafter Christian Kennedy, Special Envoy for Holocaust issues, U.S. Department of State Office for Holocaust Issues

Jiri Cisteky, Shoa Legacy Institute, Prag

Rabbiner Pinchas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi of Moscow, President of the Conference of European Rabbis

Dr. Kathrin Meyer, International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research (ITF), Berlin

Paul Shapiro, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. [written statement]