Father Patrick Desbois recounts his work as a minister in Eastern Europe in his book Holocaust by Bullets. While ministering to the elderly in the countries of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, among others, Desbois becomes convicted by how haunted these people are by their memories of WWII. Many of them carry guilt after having been forced as children to work treading down corpses in mass grave sites of Jewish victims of the Third Reich. Desbois decides to help these people find closure as well as to honor the victims whose deaths remained largely undocumented. Through careful research, he tracks down these grave sites and works with locals to give everyone a proper burial. During this time he also meets with more eyewitnesses and helps them walk through their trauma.
Desbois' narrative is difficult to read. The subject matter is graphic and horrifying, but it's all real. He is necessarily brutal in his descriptions of how the Jews in Eastern Europe were murdered by Nazi troops. In most cases, the victims were shot in the back. Neighbors were forced to bury neighbors. And anyone who tried to protect a Jew would also be murdered. Along with the actual violence of the period, Desbois notes the injustice of it. The Germans had limited ammunition so they adopted a policy of devoting a single bullet to each victim, with stone cold efficiency. In their un-ceremonial accomplishment of orders, they left behind no visible scars or memorials in the land, but the horrific memories remained in the witnesses, to whom Father Desbois ministers most of whom were children at the time.
In his account, Desbois refrains from passing judgement on anyone. He is interested in healing. Whether he's listening to an account of a soldier's particular brutality or of a witness' participation as a child in the mass burials, he extends love equally. He undertakes the challenge of discovering these sites because, as a human, he recognizes the necessity of honoring those lives ended prematurely. Unable to help his patrons forget their traumatic memories, he decides to redeem those memories by allowing the patrons to witness the correction of past mistakes in the honorable burials of the people so rudely murdered.
