Father Desbois and the Holocaust by Bullets at WJU

In front of a standing room-only crowd in WJU's Troy
Theater on the evening of March 18, Father Patrick Desbois discussed his work in uncovering the the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union. His presentation opened with a short film that included several interviews with Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants, who witnessed the German murder of Jews in their villages. Desbois and the team working for his organization Yahad-In Unum have interviewed over 3200 witnesses in Eastern Europe. While the Holocaust was long thought to be a secretive affair, Desbois's work has clearly illustrated that it was a very public event in the Soviet Union.

 He told a mesmerized crowd about interviewees who witnessed their childhood friends dragged away to the execution sites and others who went to watch the murders at the pit as a type of entertaining spectacle. In  perhaps his most disturbing anecdote, Desbois told the story of a man who moved into the house of Jews who had been killed by the Germans. While this occurred frequently throughout occupied Europe during the war, in this case, the bodies of the two Jews were still in the house when he took it over. He then buried them right outside the back door.



After a 45 minute talk detailing both the process of locating and interviewing witnesses, Desbois answered audience questions for another 30 minutes, with the majority of them focusing on issues raised in both the talk and his book, The Holocaust by Bullets. He ended his talk with a call for the audience to speak up for the persecuted and to be active witnesses in case of violence or dispossession.

The Wheeling Jesuit History Department would like to thank Father Debois, Yahad-In Unum's Robin Massee, and the more than 350 visitors from Wheeling Park High School, Wheeling Central, Shadyside High School, and Temple Shalom for attending the event.

The WJU History Club, the city of Wheeling, and "Lovescaping"

Wheeling Jesuit University's History Club recently participated in the "All We Need Is Love" initiative sponsored by the Ohio Valley Young Preservationists. In order to highlight the historic structures located in downtown Wheeling, local college students and residents "adopted" various buildings and decorated them with a Valentine's Day theme. This "lovescaping" not only illustrates the importance of these locations; it also emphasizes local residents' interest in the future of the city.

Holocaust Researcher to Speak at Wheeling Jesuit University

On Tuesday March 18, at 7pm in Troy Theater, Father Patrick Desbois, founder of the Holocaust research center Yahad-In Unum and author of the book The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Jews, will discuss his research and experiences in Ukraine.

A French priest based in Paris, Father Desbois has been featured in profiles by CNN, the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, and Moment Magazine among others. His organization, Yahad-In Unum, is dedicated to rescuing the memories of the Jews murdered by the Germans at the edge of pits and in fields, forgotten by history. For more on his organization, please visit his organization's website, http://www.yahadinunum.org/.


Earlier this month, Father Desbois was awarded the Prix du CRIF 2014 (Prize of the Council of Jewish Institutions of France). French President Francois Hollande congratulated Desbois and his organization for the vital role they play in not only advancing historical research on such an important topic but also for allowing the memory of these forgotten victims to be reclaimed.

The event is free and open to the public.

WJU Historian at Work: Part II

Dan Weimer's 2011 publication, Seeing Drugs: Modernization, Counterinsurgency and U.S. Narcotics Control in the Third World, 1969-1976, was followed in 2012 by Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide and Radicalization, co-edited by Wheeling Jesuit University's Assistant Professor Jeff Rutherford. The latter book was just released in paperback this month.

The three editors -- in addition to Rutherford, the Frankfurt, Germany-based independent historian Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, lecturer at the University New South Wales Canberra, Australia -- first conceived of the volume at the Society for Military History's 2007 conference both as a means to introduce current research trends in Germany to an English-language audience and as a means of providing an examination of the pivotal year of 1941.