YAHAD-IN UNUM ARCHIVES
AT YAD VASHEM
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and Yahad – In Unum, a French humanitarian organization founded by Father Patrick Desbois, are pleased to announce that Yahad – In Unum will hand over its extensive archive documenting the history of mass murder sites of Jews in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, making it accessible to researchers and the general public.
Yahad – In Unum's archive, which contains two decades worth of on-site research, documents and eyewitness interviews, will join Yad Vashem's unparalleled collection of Holocaust-related materials and will expand on its long-standing Untold Stories research project that has gathered exhaustive information on the history of mass killing sites in areas of the Soviet Union.
Entire families — grandparents, parents, and children — were often wiped out in a single day. They were murdered in forests, at Jewish cemeteries, in anti-tank trenches, on riverbanks, and in pits dug along the way.
The transfer of the archives has already begun, with the vision and support of long-time patrons Phil and Rose Friedman in honor of their parents, who were Holocaust survivors, and many family members who were murdered in the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem has made it a core mission to research this relatively understudied aspect of the Holocaust and has already investigated and uploaded to its website data on over 2,200 sites of mass killing of Jews by the Nazis, their allies, and local collaborators in the territory of the former Soviet Union.
Yahad - In Unum, which combines Hebrew and Latin words in the phrase 'Together in One', was founded in 2004 by Father Patrick Desbois, a Catholic priest, to investigate the horrifying history of the mass shooting of Jews, often at point-blank range, that Father Desbois refers to as the "Holocaust by bullets." Most shooting sites were located near towns and villages where Jews lived prior to the war.
For 20 years, Father Desbois and his team have collected corroborative evidence of the mass killings, interviewing more than 7,000 non-Jewish residents and identifying more than 3,000 mass killing sites. This material will be available to researchers and the general public in 2026. It will shed further light on the full scope of the atrocities and help preserve the testimonies of the last eyewitnesses that are vital for Holocaust research and education and an important pillar in exposing the appalling dangers of antisemitism.
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