The Holocaust by Bullets is a memoir and investigation written by Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest who uncovered the truth behind the murder of 1.5 million Jews in the occupied Soviet Union by Nazi and Nazi aligned forces. Published in 2008, the book details Desbois’ journey in locating and studying the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In the early chapters, Desbois describes his grandfather's story of incarceration, an experience that drove him to study the Holocaust. The book features some of the hundreds of testimonies of witnesses or requisitioned villagers who were present at mass executions that Desbois has collected with the help of translators, historians, and archival scholars. This memoir brings to light the emotional impacts of genocide and the intimate, human dimensions of the Nazi extermination.
Background
The Holocaust by Bullets was translated into English and published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2008 whilst the French version, La Shoah par Balles, was published in 2019. The publication of the English version was supported by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Prior to writing his book, between 1992 and 1999, Fr Patrick Desbois was the Secretary of Jewish Relations for Cardinals Albert Decourtray, Jean Balland and Louis-Marie Billé. He was later appointed as secretary to the French Conference of Bishops for Relations with the Jewish community from 1999 to 2016. In 2004, he founded Yahad-In Unum to locate the sites of mass graves of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Desbois' interest in the Holocaust was inspired by his grandfather, who was deported to a Nazi prison camp in Ukraine named Rawa Ruska in July 1942. Forced to witness the suffering of the Jews in Camp 325, his grandfather rarely spoke of his time in the camp, prompting Desbois to investigate the story of the Jews on his own. After several visits to Rawa Ruska that began in 2002, and meeting close to a hundred villagers who witnessed mass executions in Ukraine, Desbois decided to commit his career to "search for the Jewish people". By the time he began writing the book, his team of translators, ballistic experts, historians, archival staff, photographers and drivers had conducted over 800 interviews in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Poland. To this day, Desbois' team continues to document mass graves in Eastern Europe.
When speaking to the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in 2011, Desbois describes his motivation for his work: "Finally, why [do] we stand? Because sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's freezing, sometimes there is no running water, because we need bodyguards. Why [do] we stand after so many years? I have the conviction that we cannot build a modern Europe, and perhaps a modern world, above thousands of mass graves of Jews, who have been killed like animals, buried like animals."
Genre
The foreword of the Holocaust by Bullets was written by Paul Shapiro, Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This book has been described by Major Travis W. Elms, a Judge Advocate of the US Army, as a "methodical piece" that "guides the reader through a complex period in World War&nbdp;II history". The memoir includes pictures of mass graves, villagers, the team and the investigation, as well as maps that detail the Nazi's invasion of the Soviet Union. Each chapter describes Desbois' story and introduction of the contextual history, whilst later chapters include eyewitness accounts in question and answer form.