An Evening with Father Patrick Desbois

Opening reception at 5:00 PM 

Public talk at 6:00 PM

Event moderated by Dr. Leslie Morris (Chair, Department of German, Slavic, Nordic, and Dutch)

Father Desbois is a Catholic priest and President of Yahad – In Unum, a global humanitarian organization he founded in 2004 dedicated to identifying and commemorating the sites of Jewish and Roma mass executions in Eastern Europe during World War II. He is the grandson of a WWII French prisoner held in the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine border.

In 2004, he began to research the story of the Jews, Roma, and other victims murdered in Eastern Europe during WWII by the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen.

His work through Yahad - In Unum has been recognized through numerous awards and public regards/compliments in France and throughout the world. Father Desbois is the author of “The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews” (2007) and Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for “In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets” (2019). He also published “The Terrorist Factory: ISIS, the Yazidi Genocide and Exporting Terror” (2016), based on his investigation of the Yazidi genocide in Iraq.

Presented by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies with the Center for Austrian Studies, the Institute for Global Studies, the Department of German, Nordic Slavic and Dutch, the Center for Jewish Studies, the Human Rights, Program, the Center for Religious Studies, the Spanish and Portuguese Department, the French and Italian Department, Minnesota Hillel, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at St. Cloud State University.