Between 1941 and 1944, almost one and a half million Ukrainian Jews were assassinated when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The immense majority was killed by Einsatzgruppen firing squads (mobile execution units in the East), Waffen SS units, the German police and local collaborators. Only a small minority was assassinated after having been deported to extermination camps. Since 2004, Father Patrick Desbois and the Yahad-In Unum research team regularly travel across the regions of Ukraine, intent on identifying and assessing every site in eastern and western Ukraine in which Jews were exterminated by mobile Nazi units during World War II.

The exhibition at the Shoah Memorial, from the 20th of June, 2007 to the 6th of January, 2008, presents their ongoing research. By reconstituting the assassins’ procedural methods, it provides one with a better understanding of how the genocide of Eastern European Jews was actually put into practice. It has finally become possible to preserve and respect the victims’ burial places.