00:05
Rawa Ruska, Ukraine
Hester Wilcox
This was the camp
of prisoner number 325, minus 30 degree centigrade
in winter, stifling heat in summer, the place was also called the camp of
slow death. During World War II, the Germens interned 25,000
French deputies here. Claudius
Desbois was one of them. He recounted this slow agony to his
grandson Patrick and this story changed Patrick’s life for good.
00:35
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:40
Patrick Desbois
My
grandfather who was such a cheerful man told me, it was hard for us
in Rawa Ruska, we ate dandelions, grass. But for the others it was
worse. And so I started to come here, to try to understand. Our
daily round was work. One group worked at the station, and another
on the roads. They were ordered to destroy the Jewish cemetery, but I
know they refused. Some of the commandos were very hard, and
others weren’t as bad. But they worked all the time with Jews from
the ghetto, the men and women from the ghetto. But the difference
was that the same number never returned. So, there were summary
executions, because a guard got annoyed or simply because he just
didn’t want to bring any Jews back. They saw a huge amount of things
like that; they were condemned to see. That was their main sentence
to see…
Hester Wilcox
A condemnation that would
haunt him. Patrick Desbois, the catholic a man of the church
would become the relentless investigator of the massacre of the Jews in Eastern Europe.
01:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
02:05
Patrick Desbois
The
Ukraine, my vocation as a priest, my identity and the Holocaust are
one. This is part of the circle of my life and I wanted to
understand.
Hester Wilcox
Understand the terrible audio of the Ukrainian Jews.
02:10
[sil.]
02:15
Hester Wilcox
The crime of these men, Einsatzgruppen,
SS Special Task Forces. All was sent to the Eastern
Front officially to secure the re-alliance against all and any resistance.
In realty, they were the foremen of a
directive delivered by Adolf Hitler, exterminate all the Jews of Europe.
02:40
[music]
02:50
Hester Wilcox
Of these killings, there are few images that remain like
this film shot by a German soldier in Libau, Lithuania in
1941.
03:05
[music]
04:20
France 3
presents
A mano a mano
production
Shoah by Bullet
The Forgotten History
A film by
Romain Icard
Hester Wilcox
For the last five years,
Father Desbois has been driving along the roads of Ukraine, the same
two vehicles follow one another, interpreters,
experts and ballistics, a whole crew, how can one exhume
these forgotten dead? How can one prove the existence of the Soah
by Bullets? Sometimes other men of the Church lend their support for this
search for lost memory.
04:50
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
06:10
UNKNOWN
I’ll
tell you a story. I know that here in front of the church, at the
corner of the house next door, an unspeakably cruel German soldier
grabbed a Jewish woman’s child from her. He was barely two years
old, and he took him and banged his head repeatedly against the
wall. The child died in pools of blood in front of the parent’s
eyes. Brothers and sisters in faith, maybe some of you here today
know something about the tragedies that took place during the war,
under the Nazi occupation. About how Jewish families lived and died.
I beg you, if you know something, tell. But now, let us pray,
together. Glory to the Lord…
Hester Wilcox
An appeal for witnesses during
mass. Memory is not easily recalled, it’s too painful. Outside
the Ukrainian churches the faithful must be solicited.
06:20
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
06:30
UNKNOWN
What do you remember the Jews who lived here?
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
[non-English narration]
06:40
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
Yes, I remember when we lived here, we saw arrests, killings, executions…
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
06:45
UNKNOWN
They brought them to the edge of a pit and shot them.
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
[non-English narration]
07:05
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
But
you see the pit move, because some of them were still alive. We
were young and it was hard to watch. It was a tragedy, a great
tragedy.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
[non-English narration]
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
What’s my name? Koutcha Olha Haverylivna.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
07:10
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
Patrick Desbois
And what age were you during the war?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
07:15
UNKNOWN
And what age were you during the war?
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
[non-English narration]
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
I was 15.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
07:30
UNKNOWN
We’ll come to see you later; it’s not very feasible here.
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
[non-English narration]
Koutcha Olha Haveryliva
Alright, I’ll tell you what I know.
Hester Wilcox
The crew
led by Father Desbois listens and records those who lived through World War II,
those who witness these killings, but who never talked about them.
The work has been accomplished step by step
methodically. 65 years later villages have revealed
little by little their dark secrets. Throughout
Ukraine over a million and a half Jews were executed by the Nazis.
Until today nobody knew precisely what had become with these
victims, a whole chapter of the Shoah forgotten.
08:10
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
08:25
Patrick Desbois
There
are no gas chambers, no camps or no tattoos here. Everyone was
killed quickly. They were shot. The holocaust by bullets, all over
the continent…
Hester Wilcox
Two years after the beginning of the
war, Nazi Germany opened a new front towards the USSR.
08:35
[sil.]
08:40
Hester Wilcox
This was the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.
Adolf Hitler’s objective was to crush the Soviet
Union and take procession of Ukrainian land, which was indispensable of heinous plans to
expand Third Reich. In only two weeks after combats
of extreme violence Germen troops controlled the country.
09:05
[sil.]
09:15
Hester Wilcox
In their footsteps, the Einsatzgruppen started to work.
09:20
[sil.]
09:35
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
09:55
Patrick Desbois
In
the West we thought we would never find these Jewish victims of the
Holocaust, that they had disappeared. But, they were often buried
under a ditch. We are now examining all the murder sites to find the
bodies, to find the proof. The bodies can then be buried with
dignity. Humanity begins with burying our dead.
Hester Wilcox
And
often the search begins with witnesses encountered outside churches.
Olga was 12 years-old in 1942.
10:05
Olga Havrylivna
Aged 12 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
12 years-old when she witnessed it all.
10:10
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
10:15
UNKNOWN
How do you know that Jews were killed here?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
10:45
Olga Havrylivna
But,
because everybody talked about it, oru parents talked about it.
Everyone knew that Jews were killed here at Oukopysko. The day we
came to see they brought a lot of Jews here. There must have been 60
or 70. We look on. We didn’t go too near, we stayed over there, but
we children could still see everything.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
10:50
Patrick Desbois
Where did that start?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
10:55
UNKNOWN
Where did the pit start?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
11:00
Olga Havrylivna
Somewhere over there, as far as here.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
11:05
Patrick Desbois
Up to the tree?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
11:10
Olga Havrylivna
Yes, that’s right.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
11:15
Patrick Desbois
How many soldiers fired?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
11:20
UNKNOWN
How many soldiers fired?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
Olga Havrylivna
A lot. A lot.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
11:25
UNKNOWN
5? 10?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
11:35
Olga Havrylivna
More.
There were a lot of guards when they brought them here. All around
the pit and in front of them as well. There must have been about 15
Germans.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
11:40
Patrick Desbois
Were the Jews standing or on their knees when they were killed?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Were the Jews standing or on their knees when they were killed?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
11:55
Olga Havrylivna
Standing.
Standing, standing. They were in groups. They formed a line and
they shot them. Then a new line came up and they were shot.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
12:00
Patrick Desbois
Was that how it happened?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
12:05
Olga Havrylivna
Yes, yes, they had their backs to the pit, and they shot them.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
Patrick Desbois
And the commander, he stood to the side?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
And the commander, he stood to the side?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
12:10
Olga Havrylivna
Yes, on the side like this.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
Patrick Desbois
They didn’t get into the pit?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
12:20
Olga Havrylivna
No, nobody pushed them into the pit. They killed them and the Jews fell in.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
12:25
Olga Havrylivna
That’s what I saw.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
12:30
Patrick Desbois
Did they shoot them in the back or face to face?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Did they shoot them in the back or face to face?
Olga Havrylivna
[non-English narration]
12:40
Olga Havrylivna
In the back. They shot them in the back.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Hester Wilcox
From Olga’s memory of the vents, Father Desbois may have
discovered a mass grave, but one testimony alone is not enough. He
would have to return to fill-out the story of this killing.
12:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
12:55
Patrick Desbois
We’re
not leaving Rawa Ruska for Rovno, where we’ve already begun. I
think that it would be better to begin in the North.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Yes, the North is much different from the South.
Hester Wilcox
Every
evening, the crew goes over the day’s work. With Giom, his photographer and right hand
man, they prepared the next day’s research.
13:05
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
13:10
Patrick Desbois
We’ve already done Lubijiv. In my opinion, we have enough information to do this area.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
13:15
UNKNOWN
Yeah, and there’s a large ghetto at Sarny.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
14:10
Patrick Desbois
In
Sarny alone, 13,000 Jews were killed, 33 hanged, 91 tortured and
then killed. 13,895 all told. There is a huge amount of testimony
from people who witnessed the killings. Historically, this project
shows how each person was killed by one person with the aid of other
people. I just couldn’t listen to some of the first witnesses I
spoke to and I stopped several interviews. I said we’d stop here,
thank you. It’s too awful. And then I though, ok, but if you let the
horror take over, you’ll never know the truth and that would give
Hitler a posthumous victory. I had to stay calm and not show my
emotion and reconstruct the crime.
Hester Wilcox
They use the same method in every village. Look for
those who are children at the time.
14:15
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
14:20
UNKNOWN
What do you want to do with your grandfather?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
14:25
UNKNOWN
He was at the front at the time. We’re looking for your grandmother.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
14:30
UNKNOWN
Ok, I’ll go with you.
Hester Wilcox
Testimony
is not always easy to find. More than 60 years after the killings,
time is playing against Father Desbois, often the few witnesses left are either dead or too
weak to speak.
Lviv, Ukraine’s second largest
city, the crew wanted to show us what was one of the largest
extermination sites in the country, Lesienicki forest.
The forest where the Jewish population of a whole city
disappeared, 90,000 dead.
Adofe was 12 years old in
1941, he too was 12 years old when he saw
everything.
15:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
15:30
UNKNOWN
You were in the forest when it started?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
15:50
UNKNOWN
Yes,
I was up in a tree somewhere over there. I couldn’t tell you
exactly which one. We were playing with our sleds when the Germans
arrived. Then we heard shots and we saw smoke. We were told not to
go over there.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
15:55
UNKNOWN
What did you see from the tree?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
16:15
UNKNOWN
We
saw how they took them up. There were guards and they passed along
there, but it was higher there at the time. They beat them and
pushed them down from the trucks. Then we heard shots and people
crying.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Did it last long?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
16:35
UNKNOWN
Yes,
it was a long time. It must have started in 1941, when the Germans
arrived. Nothing happened for two months. We continued to play in
the forest, trapping squirrels, etc, and then it started. There were
massacres here all during the German occupation.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
16:40
UNKNOWN
Were they adults or children?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
17:15
UNKNOWN
Mostly
adults. That’s what I saw. But, there were some children they said,
others saw children. I wasn’t the only one who saw. People didn’t
watch all the time, it was terrifying. When you see cattle taken to
the slaughter, it’s frightening, but these people. We couldn’t
help hearing, pa-pa-pa pa-pa. They were shooting. You know, I really
want to know that we lived in fear. We were afraid that we’d be the
last ones into the grave. We witnessed it; we saw everything. We
were afraid that the last bodies would be ours that they would take
all the witnesses.
17:20
[music]
17:25
Hester Wilcox
The victims were subjected to a final
humiliation, they were ordered to undress before being assassinated.
Certain mass graves interred
up to 2,500 corpses.
17:45
[sil.]
17:55
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
18:15
Patrick Desbois
They
made them run down the path to the mass graves that were ready for
them. There were 49 graves altogether. Not all at the same time.
They dug one pit, filled it and then started another. This is an
extermination site.
Hester Wilcox
The irrefutable
character of the proof soon became evident to Father Desbois, but the question
remained how to demonstrate that the witnesses were telling the truth that the Jewish population of
Ukraine was indeed exterminated and buried where this rural memory had designated.
In August 2006, to verify the truth, he decided to
exhume the mass graves of the City of Busk. Here the Jewish
community was five centuries old, it was decimated during the war.
18:45
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
19:00
Patrick Desbois
Officially,
there was no mass grave at this site. And all neighbours who were
interviewed at Chevchenko Street that 10 people, said that they
killed Jews in the cemetery.
Hester Wilcox
Father Desbois wanted to know for sure. He started
digging, it was a matter of passing from words to
undeniable proof.
19:10
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
20:00
Patrick Desbois
First
of all we had to ask Grand Rabbi Blaich the Grand Rabbi of the
Ukraine to request it. Rabbinic law absolutely prohibits moving a
bone, especially the remains of the victims of the Holocaust, who
are seen as saints by the Jewish Orthodoxy. We received the
permission and the area was marked out with archeologists monitored
by a Rabbi from the Zaka orthodox movement. We had to balance the
requirements of Rabbinic law and the needs of the archaeologists on
the other. And then in the Ukraine, we weren’t used to opening up a
mass grave containing the bodies of Jewish victims. We
discovered that there were 17 graves. It was very hard…
Hester Wilcox
After three weeks of meticulous excavations, the archaeologists
discovered the unbearable. Under their instruments
1,700 skeletons were revealed clearly disclaim the horror of their last
moments alive. Most were shot with the
bullet to the head, others without apparent traces were most
likely buried alive. As ultimate
proof of these killings, Misha, the ballistics expert who works with the priest
found hundreds of German cartridges near the mass graves.
For Father Desbois, the witnesses were telling the truth,
no further doubts could be foreseen. But constrained by religious regulations, the
digs were stopped at the first layer of skeletons.
20:55
[sil.]
21:10
Hester Wilcox
Obliged
to leave the bodies in their current state, Father Desbois wanted to offer the
memorial tombstone. He poured a slab of
concrete and invited Jewish authorities to pay homage to the memory of the victims.
21:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English song]
21:55
Hester Wilcox
Three times a year, Patrick Desbois and his crew go to the
United States. They are in close contact with one of the most renowned research centers Yom Ha-Shoah,
the Holocaust Memorial.
Their collaboration is essential for this institution.
Thanks to their accumulated testimonies, the
victims of Shoah in Eastern Europe have finally gained their place in history.
22:25
UNKNOWN
We are dealing here with a is a very
interesting and huge puzzle and this
huge, huge puzzle is coming together and it’s
confirming that Ukraine was and
remains a huge cemetery.
22:45
Hester Wilcox
The work is meticulous and demands patience, rigor and hours of
discussion. They must confirm the millions of testimonial documents that historians
have a must.
23:00
UNKNOWN
This is just another piece of documentation. Martin has
found documentation relating to places – I think a
couple of places that you have been, but several that are on your agenda to go to.
23:15
UNKNOWN
My
project is parallel to Patrick’s, I’m trying to identify the ghettos in Ukraine and
whenever I find a sketch map or a drawing where the ghetto was, for me, this is very, very useful.
Often of course they showed the mass graves as well. If you look at this one here from Vyshnivets, did you go to
Vyshnivets already.
23:35
Patrick Desbois
Yeah.
UNKNOWN
This is a town in Volhynia just on the border of Polish.
Patrick Desbois
Yeah, we – just – yeah, I know.
UNKNOWN
And for this time we actually have a number of different sources which cooperate each other.
23:40
Patrick Desbois
Where does it come from?
UNKNOWN
Regional KGB Archive in
Tanapol(ph) and the protocol
is taken by two witnesses, I think they were bystander witnesses and they described that the person being
investigated, participated in the shooting and it shows the root they get from the ghetto and
one of the survivors describes on the day that this happened on the 12th of
August. And this man claimed, he made a speech to the Ukraine police telling them
to drive all the Jews out of the ghetto and that they have to shot outside the town, they shouldn’t be shot in the
ghetto.
24:15
Patrick Desbois
That’s why it’s also difficult find them, because people look into the city and they have been killed in the city.
24:20
UNKNOWN
But they are marched through the center of the town…
Patrick Desbois
Everybody so well.
UNKNOWN
…providing the – but
it’s providing the eye witnesses…
24:25
Patrick Desbois
Yeah.
UNKNOWN
... that you’re interviewing today.
Patrick Desbois
Exactly.
24:30
Hester Wilcox
These exchanges with Father Desbois
have made evident the importance of Soviet Archives. Several
tons of documents which have been up to now largely neglected.
24:40
Paul Shapiro
The
reality is we tend to not
want to believe Soviet documentation, because of the reputation of
the Soviet Union in some areas to not be completely
true to fact. It’s just the way it is. We tend to question and
scholars have tended to question the authenticity of what’s in Soviet
documentation. Your testimonies are saying that this is – this was
seriously done.
25:15
Patrick Desbois
This was seriously done, yeah.
Paul Shapiro
And people also tend
to question testimonies taken today. Because 60
years have gone by, because the people are elderly, but
what we’re seeing here is such a strong way is the reality is when you’re –
when you come face to face with this kind of event and this kind of
tragedy, your memory does not leave you with time,
it’s burned in these people’s memories and having watched some of testimonies you’ve taken, you
can tell that for these – for those people, it’s as if this happen…
25:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
25:55
Paul Shapiro
… you’re doing it at a time when it’s essential to do it, because those
survivors, those eye witnesses won’t be there five years from now.
26:00
Patrick Desbois
That’s for sure.
Paul Shapiro
Whatever we can do to facilitate this, you have
total access here to this whole institution and the institution
is with you 100%.
26:15
Patrick Desbois
I know, it’s also because of that
that it works, because in some complicate places like -- as we said, (inaudible
) archived
we cannot work to it.
26:30
[music]
26:40
Paul Shapiro
Director of the Holocaust Memorial
Paul Shapiro
The machinery of death of the death camps and
deportations it is what we know best and it’s important to know
it. But it’s also important to understand that
over 1.5 million innocent Jewish
victims were murdered in the former USSR and Ukraine in the
greatest numbers. This research won’t change the basic
facts, basic facts are that more than 1.5 million innocent
people were murdered. What it will change
is our understanding of what that really means,
who did what to whom and
how did they do it, on the ground, in the villages,
in the towns, with what motivation did they act,
what were the consequences, the local consequences, what has been the
impact on the people who survived.
27:45
Volyn region, Ukraine
Hester Wilcox
Since historians have given their support to the Frenchmen,
research has accelerated.
The Catholic Church lets Father Desbois works
early on in his mission.
Last summer with the aid of archives from the United States,
he decided to explore North Western Ukraine. This is one of the
poorest parts of the country, which in pre-war times counted over 150,000
Jews.
We were in what was then called Yiddishland, one of the cradles of
Jewish culture.
Craftsmen, merchants, rich and poor, Jews were an integrated
part of local society, nearly half the population.
Not a trace of this culture remains today.
And to the question, do you any witnesses of the holocaust, the response is explicit.
28:55
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
29:05
UNKNOWN
I know nothing. I have other things to do. I don’t have the time. I know nothing.
Hester Wilcox
Here
as everywhere in the country, the mass graves are near cities and villages.
Patrick Desbois knows this well.
At the end of this road over 30,000 Jews were killed by
German bullets.
29:30
[music]
29:40
Hester Wilcox
From summer 1941, the Germans organized the segregation
of the Jews.
Herded into ghettos, they were cut-off from the rest of the population.
From then on, the Germans organized what certain historians would later call
the devil’s trap. At the time, Eastern Europe
was in washy Nazi Semitism, Tsarist Russia and Stalin’s regime
inflamed this hatred. The Germans had not trouble in
manipulating local populations, they forced Jews to dissenter the bodies
of victims of recent Soviet purges with the purpose of accusing them of being the perpetrators of
these killings. The devil’s trap then snap shot.
Convinced that the Jews were responsible for the death of their loved
ones, blided, mad with rage, local populations took their revenge.
Under the satisfied eye of German troops and
cameras of Nazi propaganda the program started as in vid in
1942. But Nazi
dignitaries quickly put an end to the lynching, they wanted the killing to be more
efficient.
31:05
[music]
31:10
Yossip Revonuk
[non-English narration]
31:40
Yossip Revonuk
The
first executions began when I was going to the technical school, so
that I wouldn’t be sent to Germany. We saw the German arresting
Jews. They told them to take everything with them. We children ran
as far as the bridge. We never went any further than that. All our
group watched.
Yossip Revonuk
Aged 15 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
Yossip was
15 years old in the autumn of 1942.
31:45
Yossip Revonuk
[non-English narration]
33:20
Yossip Revonuk
There
were thousands of people in the column and one Jew threw himself
off the bridge into the river to get away. The German guard fired
and I saw the way the blood flowed but that was just a child’s
curiosity. We kept watching what was happening. The Germans were
taking away the Jews, but they could also have taken us by mistake
and made us join the column. Then suddenly, over there behind the
bridges, there are a few houses we noticed movement in the crowd.
The women started to run away and shots rang out. Then here, in
this street a German soldier killed a woman and her two daughters.
Right in front of my eyes they killed the girl. I went home and
started to tell my father, but he punished me soundly and told me I
shouldn’t have been there that I couldn’t been killed as well, as I
could’ve been Jewish or Ukrainian. So yes, I remember. It started in
the ghetto sometime in the autumn. In the autumn in 1942…
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
And where did they shoot people?
Yossip Revonuk
[non-English narration]
33:50
Yossip Revonuk
Bakhiv.
Here’s how it worked. They brought a train up there and told them
they were going to Germany for forced labour. They piled them all
in, but in reality the train skirted Kovel for about kilometers and
then turned into Bakhiv. The train was going to the sand quarry and
that’s where they shot them.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
34:35
Patrick Desbois
And
nobody has asked them. Thousands of them saw the Holocaust close-up
and nobody asked them about it. They are often asked why they’re
talking now. The answer right across the Ukraine never varies;
because you asked me. Did anybody asked about it since 1942? No,
never. They are telling what they saw for the first and maybe the
last-time. The Holocaust in the East, here, remains in the minds of
the poor. It is also the Holocaust witnessed by poor people who
hadn’t yet imbibed Soviet ideology. They are telling in their own
words what happened here.
Hester Wilcox
Yossip offers precise details to his story and points out the trail to follow to
the site of the executions. Today, Yossip can’t stop talking after
60 years of silence.
34:45
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
34:55
Patrick Desbois
Our aim is to see the topography of the events. Then, other witnesses will appear because we know where we are.
Hester Wilcox
The search begins as soon as they reached the village.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
35:10
Patrick Desbois
Stop, stop, there’s a babouchka.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
35:15
Patrick Desbois
Where were they during the war?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Where were they during the war?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
35:25
UNKNOWN
I didn’t live here, I was in Karminska.
Hester Wilcox
After an hour, a villager ends up point at a house on the village
outskirts. The person who lives there already lived there
during the war. He has always told the story of having seen the villagers
Jewish women forced to dig their own graves.
35:45
[music]
35:50
Hester Wilcox
His home is modest almost miserable,
the man is without force striking with pain.
36:00
[sil.]
36:05
Temofis Ryzvanuk
Aged 14 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
Temofis was 14 years old in 1942.
He is an eye witness.
36:10
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
36:20
Patrick Desbois
It’s July 30, 2007 and we’re in the Loutsk region in the village of…
UNKNOWN
Bakhiv.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
36:25
Patrick Desbois
Bakhiv. We’re at the house of…
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
My name is Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
36:30
Patrick Desbois
And what year was he born in?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
What year were you born in?
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
36:35
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
[non-English narration]
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
In 1928.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
36:40
Patrick Desbois
And where did he live during the war?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
[non-English narration]
38:15
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
I
lived near the quarry, I was born there. I’ll tell you how it
happened. We had trains here and they immediately made a track. The
train went in and they loaded the ballast from the pits. We didn’t
know why the Germans were forcing the Jews to do that. Why they
were digging those big holes, we didn’t know they were for the Jews.
The Germans beat them with some sort of whips. The women cried and
screamed, by they still took small shovel and loaded up the train so
they were working. Everybody was afraid. We were so afraid of the
Germans. They had things on their caps they were terrifying. My
father’s brother said: don’t be afraid, no one is going to kill you.
They’re only killing Jews. And they realized that they were
going to be killed. They stripped them naked men and women. When
they had killed them, they put them beside each other, head to head,
to pile in as many as possible, to save space. The Germans had
automatic rifles and when they got close to the pit they shot them.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
38:20
Patrick Desbois
How long did it take to kill a whole wagonload?
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
[non-English narration]
38:40
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
One
whole wagon? A few minutes. A few minutes, that’s all, nobody left.
It was all so well organized a production line. They had barely
gotten out when they fell and were pushed in and piled together,
head to head like hearings. Then the next wagonload arrived, and
then the next.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
38:45
UNKNOWN
Were there people in charge in cars?
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
[non-English narration]
39:35
Temofis Semenovitch Rizvanuk
Yes,
there were six cars. They stayed a little distance away. Six cars,
all German officers. They watched, hooted their horns and left. I
know I saw insignias. They were SS, but special. They were like some
kind of communists… Me, I’m old and I don’t care, but I don’t
want my family sent to Siberia.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
39:40
Hester Wilcox
Patrick Desbois decided to stay
in 48 hours, the descriptions of the killings came one after the other. But who
would accept to guide them to the old sand quarry, the site that everybody talked about.
39:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
40:00
Patrick Desbois
Hello.
Does he remember where the mass graves are? Tell him that we know
where they are, but not the exact location of the graves.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
40:10
UNKNOWN
We know the place, but not the exact spot where the graves are, can you bring us there?
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
40:15
Igor Chemko
Don’t know. I don’t have much time.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
40:20
UNKNOWN
Tomorrow if you prefer.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
40:25
Patrick Desbois
Maybe we should find someone else.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
40:35
UNKNOWN
You show us and we’ll bring you back in the car. You just show us, it won’t be long.
Igor Chemko
Aged 15 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
Igor
was 15 years old in 1942, he saw the
end of the killings.
40:50
[music]
41:05
[sil.]
41:10
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
41:25
Igor Chemko
There are two mass graves there; one is behind, over there. And there was a mass grave here.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
41:30
Patrick Desbois
The big one, which is it?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
3,000.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
41:40
Patrick Desbois
Wait, ask him, wait. How was it dug? What was it like? A long one?
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
Igor Chemko
How should I know?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
41:45
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
Igor Chemko
It was this long, like this.
41:50
[sil.]
41:55
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
42:00
Igor Chemko
That’s the large grave, there.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
42:05
UNKNOWN
How many people?.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
42:10
UNKNOWN
9,000
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
42:15
Igor Chemko
That’s a bone.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Yes, a bit of a skull.
Igor Chemko
[non-English narration]
42:20
Igor Chemko
The grave took up all that, there.
42:25
[sil.]
42:40
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
42:50
UNKNOWN
Patrick, I think that this hole was made by looters and grave robbers…. There that’s bone. Here, a bone.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
43:25
Patrick Desbois
All
those bones have been taken out recently. And that says volumes
about what is going on. Look, each grave robber has a hole. It’s
simple. There’s one over there. It’s like a site for them. One there
and a large one over here. They dig systematically hoping to find
jewellery or gold teeth. We’ve heard witnesses describe it. They
take away heads in a bag and go through them at home. We’ll look for
cartridge cases.
Hester Wilcox
The cartridges
amasses expertise, he can spend entire days, accumulating
evidence is the obsession of the whole crew.
43:35
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
43:45
UNKNOWN
Patrick, a German cartridge case.
43:50
[sil.]
44:00
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
44:05
UNKNOWN
It’s a seal, for signing letters, in Hebrew.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
44:15
UNKNOWN
Oh! There Patrick, a seal with the name in Hebrew.
44:20
[sil.]
44:25
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
44:35
Patrick Desbois
Bulger Soderma… I’m not sure. If that is the name, it’s incredible, he threw in his name so that someone could find him.
44:40
[sil.]
44:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
45:05
Patrick Desbois
So,
we’re coming into Loubijov. Maybe here we’ll interview people in
the square, old people. Over there’s a good spot, you have the bus
station, the market, the restaurant and the church, so we’re at
the heart of the village life.
Hester Wilcox
The crew laid out a sophisticated good work searching
for a key witness, someone who saw what happened with his own eyes. For the Third
Reich, it was crucial to keep the extermination of the Jews secrete, but
here in Eastern Europe in spite of their orders, SS commanders assassinated
openly.
45:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
45:45
UNKNOWN
The
Nazis didn’t say that first they weren’t obeying the secrecy order,
but that they also had moonlighters. There were an awful lot of
moonlight death workers. They put them into groups and had them dig
the graves. Or ordered them to walk on the bodies in between each
execution.
Hester Wilcox
Forced laborers forgotten by history,
thousands of young Ukranians accomplished the base tasks of the Nazi
killers. He was one of them. The Germans induced threats to make insipid
to them. Stepan was 18 years old
in 1942, a constrained grave digger of the Shoah.
46:05
Stepan Unchik
Aged 18 in 1942
Stepan Unchik
[non-English narration]
48:25
Stepan Unchik
I
had Jewish friends in my hamlet, two boys. We hid them and fed them
in my parent's house. The father and mother asked us to hide them -
they're killing us, they said. The hamlet was 5 kilometres from
here. Me, they conscripted me when I lived there. The Germans
arrived, two of them and took the able bodied young people. I was
there at the time - be quiet, got to bed. They took us and showed us
a spot. To be more precise, there were stakes planted to mark out
the ground we had to dig. There were 3,700 souls in that grave.
Even Children were buried over there. When it was over there was a
hillock. To tell the truth, we used a digger to put sand on top and
the blood spread out over more than a metre. Any of us who had
horses were ordered to go to the ghetto and get lime to pour over
it. The grave formed a mound, they killed 3,600 souls. The blood
rose.
Hester Wilcox
Each commando of
killers had its method of execution. Paying close attention to
details, some even drafted maps. Everything was specified from the distance of
the killers to the depths of the mass graves. An
assassin for a victim, a firing squad fire a row of condemned, grenades,
dynamite, machine guns, the sufferance of the Jews is
unalterable. But the horror did
not stop there. Any attempt to revolt was met with an unrestrained
response. Again, Patrick Desbois would verify the implacable strategy applied by the German
occupier. An active resistance
isolated or collective led to punishment by
fire. And the whole village had to pay the
price. Thousands of Ukrainians met their death burned alive.
49:30
[music]
49:50
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
49:55
UNKNOWN
Did your father die in the village?
Nadia Stepanova
[non-English narration]
50:10
Nadia Stepanova
Yes,
he was burned to death in the church. When we buried him we only
identified him by a piece of his jacket. He was unrecognisable
otherwise. He was burned to ashes.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Nadia Stepanova
Aged 13 in 1942
Misha Stepanova
Aged 15 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
Nadia and Misha
saw all the horrors of the war in Ukraine.
50:15
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
50:20
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Tell us how it happened.
Nadia Stepanova
[non-English narration]
51:15
Nadia Stepanova
How
it happened? The German soldiers advanced from Loutsk to occupy the
whole region. This is the part where there were no houses, you
probably noticed, there are no buildings. There was an act of
resistance against the Germans. After that shooting they stopped in
the village and spent the night. In the morning they gathered all
the people. They separated the Jews and shoved them into the ghetto,
like you said, into a barn, men on one side and women and children
on the other. Shots rang out. And then they dug the mass graves
and we thought, we're all going to die, like in the nearby villages.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Were many Jews executed?
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
Misha Stepanova
What?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
51:20
UNKNOWN
Were many Jews executed?
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
52:05
Misha Stepanova
I
think they must have killed about 1,000. There are two mass graves
over there. They dug large graves up to the three over there. They
used diggers for two of them. They brought them here in trucks and
shot them, the Jews. Even tiny children, so high. They lay them
down, killed them and threw others on top. I don't know how many
were killed three. Many. many.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Did you see the trucks with the Jews?
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
52:25
Misha Stepanova
But
of course I saw them. We saw how they brought them here in trucks,
how they stipped them naked. Everything off and into the hole. Lie
down.
Hester Wilcox
Each time the priest asked his witness to accompany him to the site of the killings,
he knew then that it would be easier to find all the witnesses.
52:40
[sil.]
52:45
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
52:50
UNKNOWN
Please. Give me your hand.
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
52:55
Misha Stepanova
Over there, the graves are over there.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
We'd better take the road. This way.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
53:10
Misha Stepanova
There, there's a large grave. And there was another one beside it.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
53:15
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
Misha Stepanova
It was this size.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
53:20
Patrick Desbois
How far did it go, to these plants?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
53:25
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
53:30
Misha Stepanova
I don't remember exactly how far it went.
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
53:35
Leonid Kvil
What is it?
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
53:40
Misha Stepanova
Tell me where the second mass grave is, where?
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
53:55
Leonid Kvil
So,
why did you come here if you don't know? What do you want? Drink?
Money? When they were killed, you lived over there, far over, you
weren't there!
Misha Stepanova
[non-English narration]
Misha Stepanova
I lived there at the time.
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
54:20
Leonid Kvil
Show
me where the graves are?Where is the second grave? Where? You don't
know! Me, I saw how they killed them, because I lived here. You,
you lived over there! What do you know about it, you bastard?
Leonid Kvil
Aged 7 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
Memory is still a very touchy subject among witnesses at the time.
Leonid was seven years old in 1942, seven years old when he saw the massacre of the Jews.
Seven years old when the SS entered his village. But for him, it's like
yesterday. The day when he was almost thrown into the grave with his neighboring
Jews.
54:45
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
Leonid Kvil
He didn't even live here.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
54:50
UNKNOWN
Did you go near the grave?
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
55:10
Leonid Kvil
I'll
tell you. If my mothere didn't know people in the police who
collaborated, I wouldn't be here. A German soldier was pulling me by
the hand to put me in the grave. And then someone said, he's not a
Jew. If not, I would have been stretched out like them.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
So!
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
55:25
Leonid Kvil
My mother took me by the hand, I was with my younger brother, and we both went back there. To see. It was terrible.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Where was he on the day of the executions?
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
57:45
Leonid Kvil
Where
do you think? At home is where. It began, I remember, just before
the harvest. We had just started to cut the hay. There were very few
houses here. Nobody lived here. This man, us and Paraska. When they
dug the pit, nobody knew why, even the Jews didn't know they'd be
killed. And the next day, a truck, a lorry actually, arrived here
and they went all over. And there were no houses here yet, only Klym
and Vlasko, that's all. And they began bringing them in the truck.
Bringing them in the lorry, there were two trucks, or three. I
don't remember exactly. I was small.... They took them and drove
them towards the pit. They took off all their clothes, naked, and
over there, three German submachine guns, big ones, you know, huge,
waited for them. They stripped them and into the pit. There were
only sparks. And we were young, we looked on, we were interested.
They killed them, and the trucks picked up the clothes and took
everything back to the ghetto, in the centre of town. Then they put
more Jews on top of the ones they had killed. Some weren't even
dead. And it all began again. They had put them all together in the
ghetto and for two days this went on! They covered up the grave. It
moved for 6 months and the blood flowed. They took the clothes,
brought them to the ghetto and went on killing. The Germans took the
jewellery. All the earrings, everything, they took everything.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
57:50
UNKNOWN
How far did the blood flow in the grave?
Leonid Kvil
[non-English narration]
58:00
Leonid Kvil
Maybe three hundred-four hundred metres. It flowed as far as the river. It was horrible.
Hester Wilcox
In silence, he sees the scene
again. What's more? The village has remained as if frozen in
time. Today, the children listen. They discover
history.
58:15
Nikola Kristitch
Aged 8 in 1942
Hester Wilcox
A friend from that time has much to say as well.
Nikola was eight years old in 1942. He tells the
story of massacred innocence.
58:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
58:30
UNKNOWN
Do you remember the beginning of the executions?
Nikola Kristitch
[non-English narration]
01:01:25
Nikola Kristitch
Yes.
It was a Friday. We were near the river taking out the sower. There
were nine of us boys. Then we heard "Bah, bah", something was going
"bah". We glanced around and saw vehicles, here near Mohky's and
Kopysk's houses. We looked and we saw three policmen and a German
coming. We ran and they started shooting at us. We stopped. Who are
you? We said we were taking out the sower. What are you doing around
here? Scram or we'll kill you! We ran for our lives. And here,
there was a house, on the edge, near Kopysk. We hid behind that
house to see what was going on. One after the other, the cars came,
black crows as we called them. They pushed them, roughly, the small
children... I can't tell. The children, thrown into the pit by the
hand. And the others were completely naked and walked witht he Rabbi
at their head. He gave a sermon, to all those who were already
there. And the cars kept coming, there were more and more people and
they went into the pit in rows. They all lay down like herrings.
They lay down, and there was one submachine gun and two Germans,
they had the skull and crossbones on their caps. They fired a burst
at the people lying there, and then more went in and another burst.
They kept shooting them until nightfall. And we watched. Then the
Germans went back again to get the villagers to cover the grave.
People hid to escape doing it. And us kids, we hid in the bushes,
out of curiosity, to see. That night, the people covered it in, but
the ground was still moving, for another two days. The ground
heaved.
Hester Wilcox
The horror of a child's memory.
Nikola remembers down to the smallest detail, down to the torture experienced by one of
the village's young Jews.
01:01:35
Nikola Kristitch
[non-English narration]
01:02:45
Nikola Kristitch
I
remember one of the girls, a young girl. Her panties were around
her ankles. A German fired at her and her hair caught fire. She
screamed and he took an automatic rifle, got into the grave and
fired. The bullet ricocheted off his knee and he bled everywhere. He
bandaged his knee, he was half undressed and then he emptied his
round. He even killed Jews who still had their clothes on, he
couldn't wait he was so crazed with rage. He fired at everybody, he
was crazy. The next day, the Germans began searching everywhere, in
the forests. They found some and dug another grave there. This was
covered in and there were no more killings here. But over there,
there was a second grave and all the others were killed over there,
in summer, whenever they found them.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:03:20
Patrick Desbois
Those
who took part in the killings here were sentenced. And we know that
they admit killing at least 700, at least. And at the same time
there were a lot of Ukrainian police who took part, everybody said
it. So the killers are clearly identified. What is often estimated
is the number of victims, as the people told us that it went on all
through the war, and that they reopened the graves to put in
more bodies. Clearly, that's not declared, because Ostregeits was
certainly declared "Judenfrei". And afterwards, the SS probably
didn't dare to admit, that they were still killing Jews, because
their reports were false.
Hester Wilcox
"Judenfrei",
get rid of the Jews, that was the ultimate purpose of the
Nazi extermination mission.
01:03:35
[music]
01:03:40
Hester Wilcox
Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS, was
the mastermind behind this systematic killing.
On August the 15th 1941, he went to Minsk, a
city largely destroyed to inspect his troops. On that day, he
visited Soviet Prisoner Camp. A few hours later, he himself
watched a mass execution. Paradoxically, the Chief Executioner
couldn't stomach the macabre event. No more than the
killers themselves who were qualified by the SS hierarchy as alcoholics and
psychopaths. According to historians,
Himmler concluded in his own words, death by shooting is certainly not the most
humane death. He then asked his
men to imagine a more impersonal way of killing. Talks of gas came on
to the scene. The prefigured the industrial stage that of
extermination camps and Zyklon B.
01:04:45
Myzoczs
01:04:50
[music]
Hester Wilcox
Nevertheless in Ukraine, killing by
bullets continued. Hundreds of villagers saw Jews
massacred in the middle of the countryside. These fields are the silent witnesses of forgotten
history. On October the 13th 1942, five
photos by a German policeman recount the sequence of the death
sentence. Assembling 1,700 Jews from the ghetto, undressing,
lining up in rows,
execution, the final
blow.
01:05:30
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:05:35
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:05:40
Patrick Desbois
So he lived there and saw nothing?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:05:45
UNKNOWN
Yes, he was born in 1926.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:06:05
Patrick Desbois
Yeah,
he was only 14. Ok, let's go, we'll come back, but they saw, they
lived beside there, it's not possible. Often, people are afraid to
speak because of the vegetable gardens. A very small thing stops
them from speaking. People think that it's the killings, guilt, but
it's just the vegetable gardens. We've come across that hundreds of
times.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
One day, they opened it with a digger. It was probably in the '60s.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:06:10
UNKNOWN
There was a ravine, a huge pit.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:06:25
UNKNOWN
I
don't remember exactly, but the one who did the work told us that
they found a huge amount of bones and skulls. That it gave him the
shivers.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:06:55
UNKNOWN
There,
where the car is, there's a ravine, they buried a lot of people
there. Over there too. There, where you see a tree. There, they
covered it in. Then higher up as well. That's all I know. Bye.
01:07:00
[sil.]
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:07:20
Patrick Desbois
In
the West, there can be no memory of the people they didn't bury
here. Whose bodies have been found with tractors, diggers, dogs. The
gulf is too wide. Europe will be totally blocked with this. We're
in the heart of Europe here.
01:07:25
[music]
01:07:30
Hester Wilcox
It's here without a doubt that for a lack of witness the research ends in
vain. They will return.
01:07:40
[music]
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:07:50
Patrick Desbois
It's not possible that there's no rural memory of where they are. They know. They must have seen.
Hester Wilcox
The crews voyage is near its
end. After five years of
research, Father Desbois' crew located 700 sites of extermination in Ukraine.
Death is sometimes right around the street corner, in the middle of a
city.
01:08:10
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:08:15
Hester Wilcox
Public Works have brought to
like Jewish cemetries. The cemetry was ancient and was used to hide the massacres.
The Nazi's buried 6,500 victims here, a typical
technique.
01:08:30
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Misha found human bones.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:08:35
UNKNOWN
A child's bone, a pelvic bone.
Hester Wilcox
During the 1960s, the Soviet raised a Jewish cemetry to build this cultural
center. Here a simple public works director shows that his long
history of memory erased is far from over.
01:08:50
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:09:15
Patrick Desbois
This
is where we are. These are human bones, these are people, they're
not animals. And we're in the middle of the town. We're not in a
village in the middle of nowhere. A desecrated Jewish cemetery. This
would make international headlines normally. Not here. All the
bones are in the open, everybody saw them, and the workers didn't
bother to rebury them.
Hester Wilcox
The remains of the Jewish
cemetery. Misha found them a few hundred meters from here in an old Soviet
barracks.
01:09:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:09:30
UNKNOWN
These are all gravestones, but the inscriptions are on the other side.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:09:35
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:09:40
UNKNOWN
Can he turn them around?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:09:45
UNKNOWN
Look, letters.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:09:50
Patrick Desbois
I think that's "Yehuda's daughter".
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:09:55
UNKNOWN
We'll try to turn that one.
01:10:00
[sil.]
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:10:05
UNKNOWN
There are colours on it.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
It's beautiful, it must be very old.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
Patrick Desbois
What's her name?
UNKNOWN
Massia.
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:10:25
Patrick Desbois
Massia,
she was Tema's wife. That's her life story... told in a few words.
It goes on and on. This path running perpendicular here, well it's
made from gravestones too.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:10:40
UNKNOWN
They've
been tarred over, but the stones are there. You can see some of
them. This is where the soldiers marched. The memory has been
totally eradicated. And everything's been reused.
01:10:45
[sil.]
01:10:55
[music]
Hester Wilcox
Today, the
descendents of the Ukrainian Jewish community live principally in New York.
Father Patrick Desbois regularly informs them of the
fruit of his research. The validation of
his findings by religious authorities is indispensable for the French
priest.
A few kilometers from Manhattan
resides one of the most respected Rabbis in the United States. At the very
start of the French priest research, Israel Singer supported his cause, because according to
him, his research corresponded to a major historic global
site.
01:11:45
Israel Singer
Now what is happening in this special project is that these people who were
left to die in the worst way possible are suddenly possibly in
some way being resurrected by Father Patrick and his team. I think
that this is a unique opportunity to take the
most evil that was done in the world
possibly in world history. And to take these events
of over a half a century ago and turning them on their head.
01:12:20
Hester Wilcox
Many
Jews themselves attempted to locate these mass graves, but they had never attained such
results.
01:12:30
Israel Singer
The local population is much more
trusting of a catholic priest who is coming than a Jew from Brooklyn, this is the first thing, this is a
logical thing, this is very simple to understand. You're come in the place you know in the Western Ukraine
where
most of the people are Catholic and seeing Catholic, brisk on to say,
this is good idea. If they would see me coming with a kippah
from Brooklyn, you know they would think, this is not such a good idea, you know and so that's the first
point, the feeling of trust. And second one, is it just wasn't
done, because the people who could do it were mostly
dead. They killed million and half people, among them, 113
people from my family.
01:13:10
Hester Wilcox
Over the
years and through his encounters, Father Desbois became imbued with Eastern European Jewish
culture. This allowed him to understand the still vivid pain that families suffer
from.
01:13:25
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:14:10
Patrick Desbois
We
work with Jewish organisations, first because they know many
survivors and they put us in contact with them, but also because our
work will be exhibited in New York, the city with the largest
number of survivors. These people say that the camps were often
talked about, but never what happened to us. Brooklyn is still home
to a large number of Jews from the Soviet Union. In the beginning,
unfortunately, we were the ones who brought bad news. A Jewish
friend once said to me: "The crime itself had been uppermost. Now
you're telling us that they're dead and that's very different." The
fact that we know where the bodies are, it's not just as reminding
of the crime.
Hester Wilcox
Over the last several
months, the testimonies of survivors arrive in numbers of Patrick Desbois' desk.
In particular that of one man, essential to the understanding of the perversion
of Nazi crime.
Today, settled in New Jersey Leon Wells accepted to recieve the
priest. He told him the story of his childhood as Ukrainian
Jew, a youth destined to die before being forced to work for the SS.
01:14:40
Leon Wells
We
dugged our own grave and worked on and it was two people at that time
shot. So when it came to my name to go
down, so I shouted, no, they meantime
shot somebody in the camp, so they had to be brought to this
grave. So I was in line, so they
said fine, you come with us to bring over men to
the grave, these men, say, created the death brigade,
it was called the 1005. It was a
purpose to erase any sign of criminal
signs or killing. So they took out the bodies from the
graves, put it on, you know,
wood, bodies, wood, bodies and
burnt it, separated out ashes to find
gold and that was all.
01:15:50
Hester Wilcox
Operation 1005 was top sectret. The
Einsatzgruppen did not hesitate to use Jews to carryout their most soded tasks.
01:16:00
Leon Wells
My job as Einsatz was to take care
of the gold and teeth and son on from the ashes, so they burned the
bodies. So they had to bring it
in from the day and in the evening somebody came from the bank,
an assessment and I had to give
it over to them and also some assessment were
on positive sides because they took some gold
for themselves. So I gave it to them. So I
became like an important friend.
01:16:45
UNKNOWN
And
how did you escape?
01:16:50
Leon Wells
I have something to give gold to them, they opened the door
and I --
01:16:55
UNKNOWN
And you ran.
Leon Wells
And we started to run. And I did not
know
the
neighborhood to travel, I was too young and we never went out my one
neighborhood. I did not even know where to go, where to go.
01:17:10
Hester Wilcox
He finally settled in the United States a few years
later. In the 1960s, he testified at the trial of other wise men
one of the leading figures in the final solution. Since his flight from
Ukraine, he has always refused to return.
01:17:30
[music]
01:17:35
Hester Wilcox
The German army ran into trouble at Stalingrad.
It was the winter of 1942. This was one of the turning
points at war, confronted with harsh Russian climate, the
German's retreated.
Doubt settled in, and with that doubt came the fear of having to
account for their actions. After months of indecision
in 1943, Himmler finally demanded the Einsatzgruppen to erase all evidence of their
butchery.
01:18:10
Lysinitchy Forest
Hester Wilcox
This forest became one of the principal sites of
Operation 1005.
Adofe had again become a witness.
He who at the age of nine witnessed the beginnings of the killings of the occupation,
now witnessned their negation.
01:18:35
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:19:25
UNKNOWN
They
put barbed wire all round at the end of the war. They brought the
Jews and made them live here. They dug up the bodies and burned
them. Two, three heaps, you could see the smoke rising from the
pyres. I remember that the Jews used to take this path to get water
from the well. Because the fires went on for so long, maybe five or
six months, people said there must have been 90-100000 killed.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
How did they burn them?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:19:45
UNKNOWN
They
took the bodies out of the mass graves and the stink was so strong
that you could smell it in the houses. You couldn't breathe, see.
The bodies had been lying there for two or three years decomposing.
They opened up the graves, took out the bodies and took them away on
stretches to here.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
UNKNOWN
Did you see them burning the bodies from your house?
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:20:05
UNKNOWN
It
was awful. It was like smoke rising from hell. And the worse was
the stink, when they opened the graves. We ran into the fields, to
make something to eat, the smell in the house was unbearable.
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:20:10
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:20:15
Hester Wilcox
While the Nazi's struggled to make the bodies
disappear, they organized an elaborate stage plan, a theater
of death with a role for each and everyone.
It's unique purpose was to further humiliate the young Jews.
01:20:30
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:21:00
Patrick Desbois
They
had a whole ceremony, the one who lit the fire had cow horns for
devil's horns. They had music, they had a whole ceremony. They had
someone to count, a young lad of 14 who counted the bodies and wrote
everything down in a notebook. They killed him so that he couldn't
tell the number. This is an extermination site and the site of
operation 1005.
Hester Wilcox
An operation that the German's
wouldn't have time to execute throughout country, which is why mass graves can
still be found today.
01:21:10
Rawa Ruska
Hester Wilcox
During his last voyage, Father Desbois came back to the site where for him, it all began five
years ago. Members of the local Jewish community accompanied
him. A
prayer was heard to pay homage to the memory of 1500 brothers killed in
November 1943 in this forest.
01:21:35
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:21:45
Patrick Desbois
[non-English narration]
01:22:45
Patrick Desbois
This
is the first mass grave I discovered. It was a huge surprise. was
sitting here and the witnesses arrived, they told me their story. I
didn't have a video or a camera. And just like that I discovered we
could find out where the bodies were buried. And that it was nowhere
as you can see. That the spot was unmarked. I discovered
everything in that moment. It was the previous Mayor of the town who
decided to protect the site, he arranged all that and the Star of
David to show that this is a Jewish grave. That fact that Ukrainians
are doing this means that there are people here who want to keep
the memory alive. They want people to know where the Jews were
killed and what became of the bodies. The Star of David is being
seen again on Ukrainian soil. There's not a single Star of David on
the ground in this whole region I think this will be the first in
this region.
Hester Wilcox
Three figures were present, three
survivors, the first witnesses met by Father Desbois.
Three women who pushed him to pursue a lifelong work of research.
01:23:00
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:23:10
Hester Wilcox
Another race against death has
begun. Each day that goes by the eyewitnesses disappear one by
one, and with them a part of the work of Father Desbois
the memory keep up.
01:23:25
UNKNOWN
[non-English narration]
01:23:50
[music]
Amazing man, I hope that one day, all the sites will be identified and permanent memorials laid.
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