“For me, faith is a struggle. When you see him don a helmet and bulletproof vest, it’s hard to prove him wrong. Patrick Desbois began his command mission almost twenty years ago. Always with the same posture: that of the hunter. And even if the scales of his camouflage uniform sometimes hide his Roman collar, the man of the church doesn’t pull the trigger. No gun or missiles, his weapons are different. Since 2004 and the founding of his association Yahad-in Unum, the priest has been on the trail of mass crimes. Beginning with the “Shoah by bullets”, the murder of more than one and a half million Jews in Eastern Europe by the Nazis during World War II.
Gathering evidence, interviewing victims, comparing testimonies, etc. The author of the book La Shoah par balles has traversed part of Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, etc.) for two decades, multiplying the interviews. His goal: to document the horror. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Father Desbois did not hesitate to intervene. He told AFP last March that he wanted to “gather as much testimony as possible from people who have either witnessed crimes committed or been victims themselves.”
“He is demanding, choosy (…) he also works by instinct”
A desire to delve into this recent conflict that didn’t surprise his fellow travelers. “He doesn’t stop. He wants to discover new things. He wants to move forward, give his best,” reveals Andrej Umansky, a lawyer and historian who has known Patrick Desbois since the beginning of the adventure in 2004. “He is demanding, choosy, and at the same time he works on instinct. His experience makes it easy for him to understand human behavior,” analyzes Michal Chojak, historian with a doctorate and head of the research center founded by the association.
After ten months of conflict, the association now has nearly 200 video testimonies collected on the ground or remotely. “It seemed natural to us. We didn’t know if the Ukrainians would agree to talk, but they did,” says Father Desbois, disturbed by 20 minutes during his too-infrequent vacation. A sabbatical abroad in a place the man of faith prefers to keep secret. And the priest continues by entrusting us with the stories of the victims. “I remember a woman from Mariupol who had to talk for several hours without anyone asking any questions. She described the violence she suffered, the torture, the severity of the interrogations before she was sent to a filtration camp. Another woman, one of our early witnesses, was driving her car with her husband and child in it when she felt a bullet go through her baby’s body. It hurts to hear these testimonies. Sometimes we are so taken aback by the force of the facts being described that we no longer know what to ask. »
In Kherson and Mykolaiv, Father Patrick, as he is sometimes known, even had access to a former detention center where torture was carried out on the civilian population during one of his four trips to Ukraine on December 17-19. And Andrei Umansky, who traveled to Kherson to make his expertise available to the German judiciary and to transmit information, admits: “We prefer long interviews and demand as many details as possible from the interviewees. The living conditions, the food, the exact description of the places of residence. It is difficult at the moment to make a definitive analysis, the conflict is ongoing. But crimes were not only in Boutcha, but in many towns and villages of the Russian occupation.
A personal story closely linked to Ukraine
To authenticate these testimonies, the priest and his team use the “topography” of the sites and examine certain material elements. “There are things that you only understand on site. When we are told that the rocket hit the 8th floor and the house is a pavilion, there is a problem,” the 67-year-old priest said.
Another important filter: the team ensures that the attacks target civilians and not military targets. This rigorous work interests the Ukrainian judiciary and certain German investigators, who are in contact with the father and are aware that “they are only part of the puzzle”, as he explained to Figaro in April 2022.
This flurry of stories from Ukrainians, collected 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 occurs.
“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 examine what is happening. That gives us credibility. The local authorities know us,” clarifies Michal Chojak, who researched in particular with the priest about the Holocaust by bullets in Poland.
Investigations into Daesh and the Yazidis
“I know Ukraine better than France, thanks to research into the Holocaust through bullets. People know me too. The fact that he was appointed (2021) as the director of the Academic Council of Babi Yar in Kyiv played a role. This allowed me to meet relatives of Zelensky before the war,” says Father Patrick, who was contacted by 20 minutes. Born in Chalon-sur-Saône, whose family history is closely linked to this land. In 1942 his grandfather was deported to the Rawa-Ruska camp. As 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 inquiry.
The polyglot (English, Bambara, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese) from a modest background was ordained after teaching mathematics in Burkina Faso in the 1980s before he began documenting mass crimes. Described by his team as “brave” and “intuitive,” the man in his mid-sixties wasn’t limited to Nazi abuse. In 2015, he left the country to investigate crimes committed by Daesh against the Yazidi population. A work celebrated by President Emmanuel Macron in 2017.
Returning today to Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), the city where he lives and where his association has its headquarters, the father assures us that his faith is a great support to him. “When I’m working on assassination, I control my days, but not necessarily my nights. I pray to build myself up again. Because sometimes we don’t wake up in top shape. »
In August 2022, nearly 29,000 war crimes were reported to the Ukrainian judiciary while the International Criminal Court opened an investigation in the country.