Father Patrick Desbois, a French Roman Catholic priest who since 2004 has led an international effort to locate sites of mass shootings during the Holocaust in Ukraine, will join with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to document alleged war crimes by Russia in Ukraine.
A unit created by the Babyn Yar memorial together with Desbois’s group, Yahad in Unum, will collect testimonies and evidence of civilians being targeted with the goal of aiding an international war crimes investigations.
Father Patrick Desbois, center, conducting a training at the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, January 2018 (Yahud In-Unum)
Desbois says in a statement that eyewitness testimony will be key to countering Russian claims denying wrongdoing.
“Almost 20 years ago, my organization Yahad In Unum and I began to investigate the Holocaust by Bullets crimes committed in Ukraine followed by other countries, in each village occupied by the Nazi units,” he says. “I never thought that in 2022, I would need to once again be investigating war crimes on these same lands.”
Help us report truthfully on social media
As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos.
This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world.
If you believe in the importance of factual social media journalism, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to sustain responsible multimedia reporting.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
