A Voice of Conscience: Uncovering Mass Murder from the Holocaust to Today

On a personal “holy mission” of identifying and marking at least 1.5 million graves of murdered victims of Nazism killing squads. Father Patrick Desbois, a Catholic priest and professor at Georgetown University, has devoted his life to awakening the world’s attention to mass genocide. He made world news headlines for his pioneering efforts uncovering the Third Reich’s killing fields of Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. His award winning book, The Holocaust by Bullets, is an autobiography, travelogue, and collection of transcripts as he revisited dozens of sites where Hitler’s soldiers and local militias brutally executed Jews. While not for the faint at heart, his testimony reflects his revulsion using metal detectors at previously unknown, unmarked death zones. “A bullet, a Jew, a cartridge. Three hundred cartridges, 300 bullets, 300 people executed here.” As this year’s Humanitarian honoree, he also calls our attention to later mass murders in Cambodia, Darfur, and Rwanda. As the world has watched recent reports of the Yazidi genocide committed in Iraq by ISIS, he has tirelessly worked to memorialize millions of anonymous victims. Father Desbois is president of the international organization, Yahad-In Unum, [Hebrew and Latin for “Together in One”] charged with its mission to prevent genocide and mass killings anywhere in the world today by investigating, educating, and engaging public attention.

This program is made possible through the generosity of the Frank Jacoby Foundation of Bridgeport. Presented in affiliation with the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies.

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