60 Minutes: Priest travels former USSR documenting public mass executions of Jews, Gypsies by Nazis

[uhnope]

You can watch the full episode here.

This one priest, Fr. Desbois, has made it his life's mission to find elderly witnesses to the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis in occupied USSR, thereby documenting things never before documented. He learned that far from being in any way secret, the killings were public spectacles. He says genocide is a like human plague and connects Nazi genocide then to ISIS public executions today.

One thing that crossed my mine--it doesn't show him asking anybody in Eastern Europe what their opinion of Jews or Gypsies (Roma) are today. I suspect that the answer would muddy the narrative a bit.

[Sunlei]

1. 'Hills' in fields all over those countries with hundreds of bodies, including infants & children.

[840high]

2. ...

[COLGATE4]

3. Well over a million souls. The 'Holocaust by bullet'.

[Warpy]

4. The book is still available and has haunted me for decades

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374528179?keywords=babi%20yar&qid=1444017235&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

Translated from Russian, it is beautifully written.

[canoeist52]

12. I read it in the '70's. Recommended to all, for understanding.

I visited the haunting memorial to Babi-Yar in Kiev. after reading the book.

[applegrove]

5. He did say that the locals were complicit at the time and

and that it proved that any human could be a murderer or any human could be a victim. That both are within us. I think that pretty much covers it.

[uhnope]

7. thanks for pointing that out

[Sunlei]

9. Priest said its the same as IS today, public executions & people not in danger of death, watch

[MADem]

11. More than complicit--they treated it like a festival, some of them.

He talked about how people will cheerily watch the murders of fellow humans if they know they aren't next. One woman said that the ground moved for DAYS afterwards.

That was one of the toughest things to watch that I have ever seen on 60 Minutes. That priest is doing a service to history that is difficult but invaluable.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. And just last week I wrote...

The Little Known Holocaust, Before the Death Camps: Babi Yar (Graphic photos)

I'll watch this program this week. Thanks for the OP.

[applegrove]

8. Yes. I saw that last week and thought the 60 Minutes story was

on that event. Turns out there are thousands of like events during WWII in Russia. So many that they have to up the number of holocaust victim upwards. Unbelievable that within a lifetime of now it all occurred.

[Behind the Aegis]

10. It likely why they called it the "Hidden Holocaust" and I called it "The little known" one.

Even in (Hebrew) Sunday School, many of these events were overshadowed by the death camps. Documentaries are the same, but recently, more and more are actually discussing events like Babi Yar and others. I learned about this from my own family. Part of my father's family was killed in the "pits" in Lithuania, and cousins of my grandmother's family met their deaths in Belarus. What makes research even more difficult is all of this wasn't done by the Nazis, so getting information on entire villages can be very difficult.