Disrespect of the Dead
The German troops who were sent into western Europe were already tired when they arrived. They bore the brunt of the work during WWII. By the time they arrived in places like Ukraine and Belarus, they were starving and sick. They executed their orders in the most disrespectful way possible. Rather than tracking down Jews and containing them, they murdered them all. These men, women, and children were shot in the back most of the time, evidence of little to no warning. More than likely they had no idea why they were being targeted. Adding insult to injury, the Germans placed these corpses into unmarked mass graves -- pits dug into the ground at some remote site. They had no intention of preserving these people's dignity or even memory for posterity. Finally, they ordered children from the local villages to work on these graves, trampling corpses down to make room for more.
Inhumane Efficiency
Along with the German army's rather dire position in the East came orders to preserve supplies at all costs. The soldiers interpreted this to mean kill but do so efficiently. Thus they adopted the policy of one bullet per victim, allowing no one to expend two rounds on the same person. While they could have saved resources by simply capturing and imprisoning these people, the Germans insisted upon their complete elimination in the region. Their brutal efficiency extended even to the forced labor of local, non-Jewish or Romany children at the mass grave sites. Rather than finish their dirty work alone, they forced innocent children to handle the corpses and further desecrate their burials.
Healing
Father Dubois' mission is to bring healing to the peoples of the USSR. In light of the violence of WWII, he becomes well informed on the actual effects of that period on the average citizen. Most of his patrons are elderly or the poor. They bear the burdens of their wartime traumas, during which time most of them were children. As Father Dubois goes about his work, he becomes increasingly compelled to help the regions he's traveling through find peace about the war. He decides to locate these mass grave sites and to give the victims proper burials. Through this process, he meets dozens and dozens of people who remember when the Germans came through executing Jews. He offers them healing by honoring those people's deaths for the benefit of the living. He gives the survivors closure regarding the horrors of their youth by undoing the brutal dishonor of the German troops upon the land and its people.
