Priest Uncovering The Beginnings Of Nazi Final Solution

[IndianaGreen]

Priest Uncovering The Beginnings Of Nazi Final Solution

MARIA DANILOVA and RANDY HERSCHAFT
January 31, 2009 09:32 PM EST

KIEV, Ukraine — The Holocaust has a landscape engraved in the mind's eye: barbed-wire fences, gas chambers, furnaces.

Less known is the "Holocaust by Bullets," in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under-researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves.

"Shoah," French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's documentary, stands as the 20th century's epic visual record of the Holocaust. Now another Frenchman, a Catholic priest named Patrick Desbois, is filling in a different part of the picture.

Desbois says he has interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union. The result is a book, "The Holocaust by Bullets," and an exhibition through March 15 at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Brought to Ukraine by a twist of fate, Desbois has spent seven years trying to document the truth, honor the dead, relieve witnesses of their pain and guilt and prevent future acts of genocide.

Some 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine's 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during the war. Another 550,000-650,000 Soviet Jews were killed in Belarus and up to 140,000 in Russia, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/31/priest-uncovering-the-beg_n_162865.html

[Octafish]

1. ''Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.''

Remembering is the first step to keep history from repeating.

[Chulanowa]

2. Easy to say...

Hard to live by.

Unless the recent flap with the Turkish PM has changed thing, the state of Israel still doesn't recognize the genocide of Armenians as such - which is ironic since the term "genocide" was coined by a Jewish holocaust survivor to refer to the Armenians! There are countless Americans on both continents who would never apply the term to what happened to the Native Americans - It certainly took place in Mexico and the Andes. People still hem and haw over the continued murdering of the Hmong people and the systemic extermination of people in many parts of Africa - not just the infamous (and Christian) Darfour region of Sudan, but also the pygmy peoples of the Congo.

People seem very eager to forget everyone's pain but their own, and exclude any newcomers as well. Sadly genocide has become a political poker chip in many ways rather than a horrific crime inflicted upon many, many peoples both in history and continuing today.

[Enthusiast]

3. Notice right wing revisionists

are those that deny both Native American and Jewish genocide.

[shrike]

4. Very interesting post, thank you

I may have to buy the book.