“For me, faith is a struggle. Seeing him put on a helmet and bulletproof vest, it’s hard to prove him wrong. Patrick Desbois began his commando mission almost twenty years ago. Always with the same posture: that of the hunter. And, even if the scale of the camouflage uniform sometimes hides his Roman collar, the man of the church does not pull the trigger. No rifle or missiles, his weapons are different. Since 2004 and the foundation of his association Yahad-in Unum, the priest tracks down mass crimes. Starting with the “Shoah by bullets”, the assassination during the Second World War of more than one and a half million Jews in Eastern Europe by the Nazis.
Collecting evidence, interviewing victims, cross-checking testimonies, etc. For two decades, the author of the book Holocaust by bullets crisscrossed part of Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, etc.) by multiplying the interviews. His goal: to document the horror. So when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Father Desbois did not hesitate to get involved. Last March, he told AFP want to “collect as many testimonies as possible from people, either having witnessed crimes committed, or having themselves been victims”.
“He is demanding, picky (…) he also works on instinct”
A desire to immerse himself in this recent conflict, which did not surprise his fellow travelers. “He doesn’t stay put. He wants to discover new things. He wants to move forward, to give the maximum”, confides Andrej Umansky, jurist and historian, who has known Patrick Desbois since the beginning of the adventure, in 2004. “He is demanding, picky, and at the same time he also works on instinct . His experience makes it easy for him to understand human behavior”, analyzes Michal Chojak, PhD in history and director of the research center founded by the association.
After ten months of conflict, the association now has nearly 200 video testimonies, collected on site or remotely. “It seemed natural to us to do so. We didn’t know if the Ukrainians would agree to talk, but they did,” said Father Desbois, disturbed by 20 minutes during his all-too-rare vacation. A break taken abroad in a place that the man of faith prefers to keep secret. And the priest continues by entrusting us with the stories of victims. “I remember a woman from Mariupol who needed to talk for several hours without anyone asking questions. She detailed the violence suffered, the torture, the virulence of the interrogations before she was sent to a filtration camp. Another woman, one of our first witnesses, was driving her car with her husband and child in it when she felt a bullet go through her baby’s body. These testimonies are painful to hear. Sometimes, we are so surprised by the violence of the facts described that we no longer know what to ask. »
In Kherson and Mykolaiv, from December 17 to 19, during one of his four trips to Ukraine since the start of the war, Father Patrick, as he is sometimes nicknamed, was even able to access a former detention center where torture sessions were carried out on the civilian population. And Andrej Umansky, who was on the trip to Kherson to provide his expertise and transmit information to the German justice system, to confide: “We favor long interviews, and we ask for as many details as possible from those interviewed. The living conditions, the food, the precise description of the living places. It’s difficult to make a definitive analysis at the moment, the conflict is ongoing. But crimes, there were not only in Boutcha, but in many cities and villages of Russian occupation”.
A personal story intimately linked to Ukraine
To authenticate these testimonies, the priest and his team use the “topography” of the places and check certain material elements. “There are things that you can only understand on the spot. If we are told that the missile hit the 8th floor and that the house is a pavilion, there is a problem”, image the priest, aged 67.
Another important filter: the team ensures that the attacks target civilians, and not a military objective. This rigorous work interests the Ukrainian justice and certain German investigators, in contact with the father, conscious of “being only one part of the puzzle” as he declared to the Figaro in April 2022.
This windfall of stories from Ukrainians obtained in a few months is made possible thanks to the work of “mediators”, locals busy collecting and contacting victims on social networks, before a possible physical encounter.
“We have made 73 research trips to Ukraine on the Holocaust by bullets over the past twenty years. It is also this heritage that opens doors for us to investigate what is happening. It gives us credibility. The local authorities know us, ”clarifies Michal Chojak, who notably investigated with the priest on the Holocaust by bullets in Poland.
Investigations into Daesh and the Yazidis
“I know Ukraine better than France thanks to research on the Holocaust by bullets. People know me too. The fact of having been appointed director of the academic council of Babi Yar in kyiv (in 2021) played. It allowed me to know relatives of Zelensky before the war”, relates Father Patrick, contacted by 20 minutes. The native of Chalon-sur-Saône, whose family history is intimately linked to this country. In 1942, his grandfather was deported to the Rawa-Ruska camp. A survivor of the camps, he was never able to share his story with his family. This is part of what motivated the priest to embrace a life of investigation.
After having been a mathematics teacher in Burkina Faso, this polyglot (English, Bambara, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese) from a modest family was ordained a priest in the 1980s, before starting his work documenting mass crimes. . Described as “brave” and “intuitive” by his team, the sixty-something was not limited to Nazi abuse. In 2015, he left to investigate the crimes perpetrated by Daesh on the Yazidi population. A work hailed in 2017 by President Emmanuel Macron.
Today, when he returns to Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), the city where he lives and which houses the headquarters of his association, the father assures us that his faith is of great support to him. “When I work on assassinations, I control my days, but not necessarily my nights. I pray to rebuild myself. Because, sometimes, we don’t wake up in great shape. »
In August 2022, almost 29,000 felonies of war have been reported to the Ukrainian courts, while the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation in the country.