Over the past two decades, Father Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest, has been identifying World War II atrocity sites, uncovering evidence of overlooked massacres. After doing similar work with the Yazidi victims of the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, he is now back in Ukraine, collecting testimonies from the victims of the Russian invasion, reports FRANCE 24.
Father Patrick Desbois’ mission to fight the bigotry that causes genocide began 20 years ago in the western Ukrainian city of Rava-Ruska near the Polish border. His grandfather was one of 25,000 French soldiers detained in a notorious Nazi camp in the city during World War II, which prompted the French Catholic priest to make his first trip to Rava-Ruska back in 2002.
The celebrated Holocaust memory-keeper has since worked tirelessly to document the mechanics of mass murder, receiving numerous awards, including the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest honour, along the way.
Following the rise of the Islamic State (IS) group, Desbois began working on the Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq’s Sinjar region in 2014.
The 66-year-old Catholic priest is the founder of the Yahad-In Unum, an NGO dedicated to uncovering genocidal practices, and is the author of several books, including “The Holocaust by Bullets” – as the overlooked 1940s massacre by Nazi mobile death squads and local auxiliaries came to be known.
Twenty years after his first trip to a Nazi camp in Ukraine, Desbois is once again focused on Eastern Europe.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, the French Catholic priest – who is also the academic director of the Babi Yar Memorial in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv – started collecting testimonies on the conflict.
Read more of this report and interview with Father Patrick Desbois published by FRANCE 24.