FATHER PATRICK DESBOIS TO BE KEYNOTE SPEAKER
AT 12TH ANNUAL HOLOCAUST SYMPOSIUM
Dear Educator,
We are thrilled to announce that Father Patrick Desbois, will be the keynote speaker at the
Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre’s 12th Annual Holocaust
Symposium, on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Father Desbois, a French Catholic priest, is
President of Yahad – In Unum, founded in 2004. He has devoted his life to researching the
Holocaust, fighting antisemitism, and furthering relations between Catholics and Jews. The
grandson of a WWII French prisoner held in the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine
border, he began in 2001 to research the story of the Jewish, Roma and other victims
murdered in Eastern Europe during WWII by the Nazi mobile killing units, the
Einsatzgruppen. Father Desbois' extraordinary research and educational efforts to preserve
the memory of the 1.5 million victims of the "Holocaust by Bullets" has created greater public
awareness of this dark period of history. His work through Yahad – In Unum has been
recognized with numerous awards and honours internationally. It is indeed an extraordinary
opportunity for students to hear this internationally renowned and distinguished speaker. We
are also very pleased to announce that the University of Winnipeg, will be honouring Father
Desbois during his visit with an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity honoris causa at a Special
Convocation to be held on Thursday, May 2, 2013 after the 12th Annual Holocaust
Symposium at UWinnipeg.
A short biography of Fr. Desbois follows. The words of Paul Shapiro, Director, Center
for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Washington, DC sum up perhaps, the unique opportunity that you and your students have
this year: “The shroud that hung over what we knew of the first mass victims of the
Holocaust remained, until the extraordinary work of Father Desbois opened a way
forward…he is restoring to hundreds of thousands of victims too long forgotten the humanity
that the Nazis sought to strip from them. The victims are not nameless corpses. By
restoring their memory, he is resurrecting our own humanity as well and denying victory to
the perpetrators and to all who have sympathized or may yet sympathize with them…All of
us – Christians and Jews, the victims whose memory he has retrieved and the eyewitnesses
whose consciences he has relieved, Holocaust survivors and survivors of other genocides,
people of good will of all faiths and in all countries – owe him a debt of gratitude.”
As we are anticipating that the response to an invitation to hear a speaker of this calibre will
be even higher than usual, we have decided to go with a different format this year. Fr.
Desbois will speak in the morning and the afternoon. You may register for either one of
these sessions as indicated on the registration form.
Since the history of the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi killing units is not something that you
might ordinarily cover in your classrooms, we would ask that you show the CBC
documentary, Holocaust By Bullets on Father Desbois and his work to your class
before the Symposium; it can be found on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5DSH2EqZ54 . The documentary is 22 minutes long.
We also ask you to consult our online study guide for information on the Shoah.
http://www.ffhec.org/educators.cfm A separate article on the Einsatzgruppen is included with
this email package.
Many of you have indicated on your exit surveys that you would like to see a visual exhibit
as part of your visit to our Symposium. We will be bringing in “Whoever Saves A Single
Life… Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust”, an important exhibit from The Jewish
Foundation for the Righteous of New York City. The exhibit will be available for schools to
visit on-site at the Ridd Sanctuary at the University of Winnipeg during the time they are not
scheduled to hear Father Desbois. “The exhibit showcases some of the rare- but
exceedingly important instances where people fought to safeguard their fellow Jewish
citizens during the Shoah. In times of overwhelming death and destruction, rescuers did not
stand by silently.” The exhibit speaks to the importance of not being a bystander and how
individuals can make a difference. It tells the stories of rescuers from 27 countries.
http://www.jfr.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Exhibition_on_Rescuers
The day will begin with brief opening remarks, a presentation by Fr. Desbois and a question
and answer period. During the morning or afternoon, when you are not in Duckworth,
hearing our keynote speaker, the activities we are planning for the students include our
exhibit (see above), a film and another guest speaker. You will receive a schedule for these
activities, once al schools have been registered, in the spring.
The fee is $7.00 per student, to cover the costs of the program. Please register early
to ensure your students’ participation.
If you have any questions, please contact Roberta Malam, Holocaust Symposium
Coordinator at 4777460 or by email: [email protected]
A selection of comments from last year’s participants:
“The most important lesson I learned at the Symposium was the importance of knowledge
as a tool to help prevent other acts of hate and ignorance and the importance of being a
witness to the stories and memories of others.”
“The student commented on the fact that they felt honoured to be a part of this experience
and some of the senior students said that it was one of the most memorable experiences of
their high school career.”
Sincerely,
Belle Millo
Chair, FreemanFamily Foundation
Holocaust Education Committee
Roberta Malam
Holocaust Symposium Coordinator
Bio - Father Patrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois is a Catholic priest and President of Yahad –
In Unum. He also serves as director of the Episcopal
Committee for Catholic-Judeo Relations, under the auspices
of the French Conference of Bishops. The grandson of a WWII
French prisoner held in the Rawa Ruska camp on the PolandUkraine border, he began in 2004 to research the story of the
Jewish, Roma and other victims murdered in Eastern Europe
during WWII by the Nazi mobile killing units, the
Einsatzgruppen.
Father Desbois has devoted his life to researching the
Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism, and furthering relations
between Catholic and Jews.
His work through Yahad has been recognized through
numerous awards and commentary in France and internationally.
Father Desbois was born in Chalon- sur-Saône, France, in 1955. His childhood was greatly
impacted by his grandfather, who, as a French soldier during World War II, had been
imprisoned in the Ukrainian prison camp at Rawa Ruska. His grandfather spoke little of what
occurred there, saying only “for others, it was worse.” For years, young Patrick did not know
who these “others” were, or what their “worse” fate entailed. His grandfather’s experience
remained obscure, until, at 12 years old, he found a library book about the Holocaust. The
book’s pages revealed images of the genocide he had known only as a distant, painful
family mystery. One picture in particular finally gave meaning to his grandfather’s words: a
photograph of Jewish men and women in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. The
“others” were these Jews; their fate was “worse” because it was unimaginable. From that
day forward, Father Desbois saw Jewish history as inextricably tied to his own. While
passion for his own religion would later bring him to the clergy, he longed to understand the
religion of those whose agony his grandfather had witnessed.
Early professional life and entry into the clergy
Before he studied religion, he studied mathematics, his focus as a university student and
later as a teacher working for the French government in West Africa. His work abroad was
not limited to the classroom; he also helped Mother Theresa set up homes for the dying in
Calcutta. While there, he was struck by the villagers’ persistent faith in God. Upon his return
to France, Father Desbois shocked his secular family in announcing his decision to become
a priest. During his clerical studies, Father Desbois supplemented studies of Catholicism
with studies of Judaism. He spent time at Yad Vashem where he learned the history of antiSemitism. He also worked closely with Dr. Charles Favre, a leader in the French Jewish
community. Together, the two studied Jewish history, culture and religion.
Father Desbois’ work in Eastern Europe
In 2002, Father Desbois traveled to the Ukraine, so he could finally see where his
grandfather and the “others” had suffered. What shocked Father Desbois was not what he
saw, but what he did not see. Father Desbois knew that 10,000 Jews had been killed there,
but he saw no marking or memorial of any kind. When he asked the town’s mayor at the
time where the Jews were buried, the mayor replied simply, “We don’t know anything about
that.” Father Desbois began to ask questions. He quickly learned that since the massacre,
there had been little investigation into what had occurred and no proper documentation of it.
Yet, as Father Desbois further explored the town, he realized the massacre’s presence had
not entirely vanished: its imprint lived in the memories of its witnesses. These witnesses,
now aged, spoke little about the past, but it lurked over the village in marked silence.
A Mission
In 2004, in an effort to lift this silence, Father Desbois helped create Yahad – In Unum. The
organization funds missions by research teams to Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Poland to
interview those, who, like Patrick’s grandfather, witnessed the ultimate evil. In these
interviews, witnesses can finally give voice to what they saw; Father Desbois listens with the
sensitivity of a priest and probes with the curiosity of a detective. His aim is and always has
been to unleash the truth and the stories of those who perished.
Bio from http://www.yahadinunum.org/index.php/about-yahad/about-father-patrick-desbois/
Please see www.yahadinunum.org for more details on Father Desbois and Yahad-In-Unum.
Photo courtesy David Merlin-Dufey - Juste des Films for Yahad-In Unum