The active historical investigative work under way by Father Desbois and others is challenging that silence, and educating people around the world. It is not discussed, and rarely acknowledged in public. In spite of the Einsatzgruppen Nuremberg trials from 1947 to 1948, material evidence (bullets and archival photos), accounts of local witnesses, and testimonies by rare survivors, the Holocaust by bullets in Berezne and Rovno, like in the Ukraine at large, remains shrouded in secrecy. Symbolic footprints commemorate their forced descent to their deaths. It is very large and there are dozens of plaques with some of the names of those killed. The memorial area where the 17,500 were buried in mass pits in Rovno is overwhelming. As witnesses explained and I saw firsthand, 17,500 people were killed by bullets at the mass grave site in Rovno, and approximately another 5,000 were thrown into a big stone quarry pit in Kostopil.
The total population of Rovno in 1939 was approximately 40,000, 30,000 of which were Jews. Others willingly did so.Ī number of Jews from Berezne were killed in the major city centre of Rovno, a 45 minute car ride away today. Some Ukrainians were forced to assist in the killings. Many of the children were simply thrown into the pits and pushed down so as not to waste a bullet. According to witnesses, the pits moved for three days, and blood leaked through the ground. They were then shot to death in rows of five. On August 25, 1942, 3,680 Jews were marched out of the Berezne ghetto and forced to help dig three mass grave pits, each 20 metres in length. I spent time doing research on the Holocaust by Bullets and interviewed witnesses in Rovno and Berezne. Last fall, I had the opportunity to travel to the Ukraine. However, in general, the public is more familiar with the gas chamber method of killing. The Nazis later determined it was more cost effective to kill Jews and other groups by inserting Zyclone B gas in large-scale gas chambers. Here is a map representing a sampling of the massacre sites: Jews were rounded up in town ghettos and told they were to be relocated, only to be taken to the woods, to be shot.
#Concentration camp photos mmass gravesd code
Remains of a child under 10 next to those of an adult found in Busk by Desbois and his teamĪs their testimonies explain, after Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the German attack on the Soviet Union in June of 1941, special mobile extermination squads were organized to kill Jews by bullets in the former Russian occupied zone. However, witnesses are dying and time is running out to capture their stories. Since 2004, they have interviewed over 800 eyewitnesses and identified more than 900 mass graves in Ukraine and Belarus. Interviews with local witnesses more than 60 years after the fact provide harrowing accounts of the “Holocaust by bullets.” Using ballistic evidence to locate mass grave sites with the help of local witnesses, Father Patrick Desbois and others have revealed more on this unknown chapter of Holocaust history. In village after village in present-day Ukraine, they are working with the public. The type of research underway on the Holocaust by bullets by his team is as active as it gets.
On Monday, October 4, 2010, Father Patrick Desbois, President of Yahad-in Unum and author of The Holocaust by Bullets: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews (2008), presented at an event in Toronto, Canada, hosted by the Holocaust Education Committee of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue of Toronto and Beth Tzedec Congregation. © Russian state archives of films and photo documents. Original photo caption: "Hitlerites shoot soviet citizens 1942". Jewish men being put into rows for execution by Waffen SS members and SD officers.
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