FIU co-sponsors lecture on the mass shooting of Jews in Ukraine


WHAT: Florida International University is co-sponsoring a lecture by the Rev. Patrick Desbois, author of The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, winner of the 2008 National Jewish Book Award. The lecture is on the mass shooting of Jews in Ukraine during World War II. Between 1941 and 1944, almost 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. This lecture presents the evidence, both physical and testimonial, gathered by Desbois, a French Catholic priest, and his team. The shootings of the Jews in Ukraine were the first mass killings of the Holocaust. They occurred not in secluded sites or behind barbed wire fences, but in public, often very close to the victim’s towns and villages. Desbois and his team (an interpreter, a ballistics expert, a photographer, and an archival researcher) have spent more than five years uncovering the history of the events that occurred and locating the sites of mass graves of Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi mobile killing units. The lecture is co-sponsored by the FIU Judaic Studies Program of the School of International and Public Affairs; The Shul; Targum Shlishi, a Raquel and Aryeh Rubin Foundation; Yahad-In Unum; The Holocaust Memorial; and Books & Books.

WHO: The Rev. Patrick Desbois is the president of Yahad-In Unum (yahad means together in Hebrew; in unum means together in Latin), which was co-founded in 2004 by the Archbishop of Paris and the head of the World Jewish Congress to promote Jewish-Catholic dialogue, joint social relief programs, and common moral values throughout Europe. The work of identifying the sites of Jewish mass executions is the major focus of Yahad-In Unum. He has been an advisor to the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews since 2003, he is a member of the board of the French Judeo-Christian Friendship Society, and he was personal aide to the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. In the first four years of his research, Desbois located 600 sites of mass graves and estimated that 1,800 were left to be located in Ukraine. Prior to his investigations, 200 sites were known. Desbois and his team have travel to Ukraine at least every other month, to small villages where he interviews residents who witnessed the killings.

WHEN: Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 8 p.m.

WHERE: The Shul, 9540 Collins Ave., Surfside, FL. The event is free and open to the public.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Call The Shul at 305-868-1411, ext. 7319

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