Witness to the killing fields

IT would have been some sight for the waitresses in the village bistro in Ukrainian Galicia. A small party, including a French Catholic priest, Father Patrick Desbois (pictured) emptying pockets with a clink of metal.

In those pockets were 600 cartridges; cartridges that had originally been fed through the magazines of Nazi guns and shot into the hearts of Jewish innocents.

It was all part of Father Patrick Desbois’ tireless efforts to catalogue the Nazi killing fields of Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine, documented in his book Holocaust by Bullets.

As well as recording the testimony of hundreds of elderly villagers, Father Desbois collected cartridges. His large pile, proof of the dark history of dozens of forests and fields.

Speaking to The AJN before his upcoming visit to Australia as a guest of Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Father Desbois recounted the 1700 interviews he has done with Holocaust witnesses.

“It is a challenge not only for me, but for my whole team,” he said of the emotional toll.

Father Desbois was raised in a small French village. He was aware there was a dark patch in his grandfather’s past, which he discovered came from time spent in Rawa-Ruska, Ukraine, at a Nazi internment camp.

While his grandfather survived to return home, he was burdened with the memory of 10,000 Jews and 18,000 Russian prisoners killed in Rawa-Ruska.

At the age of 35, Father Desbois made a Catholic pilgrimage to Poland. It was while there that he was hit with the realisation: “I saw the Holocaust as a responsibility.”

He learned Hebrew and immersed himself in Holocaust studies at Yad Vashem. A desire to document as much as he could led him to embark on countless trips to Ukraine.

Asked if he wanted to beg witnesses why they had not done more, Father Desbois explained most of his interviewees were children during the war.

He added: “We really want to know what happened. One told us that his mother used to be a cleaner for the Gestapo. I asked him ‘did you ever visit your mother after school?’ He said, ‘yes of course’.

“From that I could learn what the Gestapo did, how they arrested the Jews, tortured them and so on.”

Father Desbois explains the closer witnesses were to the killers, the better they are at providing information. As well as digging up the past, Father he is committed to promoting tolerance for the future.

Working hard to build relations between Jews and Catholics, he says he has learned genocide is a “disease of humanity”.

Father Patrick Desbois will deliver the Monash Wallenberg Oration on June 2 and  speak at Monash’s Holocaust and Genocide studies conference on June 5 and 6.
Enquiries (03) 9903 5002; acjc@monash.edu.

NAOMI LEVIN

Image: Father Patrick Desbois