A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate
He is neither a historian nor an archaeologist, but a French Roman Catholic priest. And his most powerful tools are his matter-of-fact style — and his clerical collar. The Nazis killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history has gone untold. Knocking on doors, unannounced, Father Desbois, 52, seeks to unlock the memories of Ukrainian villagers the way he might take confessions one by one in church.
Not many of us are blessed with an opportunity to make a lasting difference on a large scale. Then again, not many of us would want to assume the moral burden that Rev. Desbois has willingly taken on. Most of us recognize that the Holocaust is a historical chapter that should not be consigned to the dark corners of history books. All you have to do is to look at places like Bosnia, Croatia, Sierre Leone, and Rwanda in order to understand that humans simply do not learn from history the lessons begging to be taught. Speaking as someone who’s seen the aftermath of genocide firsthand, I can say with all seriousness that you should be hitting your knees and thanking whatever deity you pray to that you and your loved ones have been spared this kind of suffering. There are simply no words available to adequately describe the pain and the anguish that genocide can wreak upon families, villages, and indeed entire nations.
These stories need to be told. Those who will comprise future generations need to know what’s happened, what some of their forebears have wrought and others have endured. Victims need to be remembered, and history needs to be respected and preserved. Only then will we have any hope of ensuring that genocide is the exception and not the rule.
If not for the commitment and dedication of Rev. Desbois, the stories of thousands of murdered Ukrainians, and those who witness the horrors, might never be told. At least now there will be a record of what happened and where. Even if nothing else happens, generations of Ukrainians will be denied the excuse of not knowing what happened to their forebears and why. We need to remember what happened in Ukraine…and Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum. If we forget the murderers and those they’ve murdered, what’s to stop the same thing from happening at another time and place? Only when we’re made aware of the horrors we’re capable of visiting upon one another will we have any hope of working toward a world in which men and women are no longer murdered simply for who they are.
Honestly, though, we’re still a LONG way away from achieving that goal. Would that there were more heroes like Rev. Desbois.
