Denver, CO, Nov 21, 2016 --- International humanitarian organization Yahad-In Unum (YIU) has established a new educational curriculum for the Holocaust based on the “Holocaust by Bullets,” made world renown by YIU founder Father Patrick Desbois. The “Holocaust by Bullets” examines the systematic execution by shooting of all Jews and Roma, which started before the creation of concentration camps throughout the ex-Soviet Union from 1942 to 1944.

During this time, more than 2 million Jews were massacred when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In two and a half years, the Nazis killed almost all the Jews in the region. This chapter of Holocaust history, known as the “Holocaust by Bullets”, is relatively unknown. On the last 10 years Yahad-In Unum has identified over 1,700 sites of massacres and interviewed more than 5,400 local non-Jewish witnesses in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Romania, Macedonia and Poland.

With the culmination of these years of research, YIU has created a new Holocaust education program for high school teachers, which focuses on this previously ignored but vital piece of history.

This week over twenty teachers from Colorado took part in the new curriculum training at Temple Sinai in Denver, hosting educators and representatives from The Mizon Museum, The U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Holocaust Educators, Metropolitan State University, The University of Colorado, and the Colorado Department of Education. Yahad-In Unum also launched pilot educational courses for current students in three Denver area high schools in conjunction with the Colorado Holocaust Educators.

“For decades, the commonly taught misconception about the Holocaust was that it was contained within the walls of Nazi concentration camps. This couldn’t be more wrong,” said YIU founder Father Patrick Desbois. “With the evidence we have discovered and documented we can now correctly depict the atrocities committed not only to Jews but to the Roma, outside of camps, in the surrounding cities and country sides of Europe. This vital educational program will impart accurately lessons about genocide undertaken in the past and how it is mirrored worldwide in the present.”

The Holocaust by Bullets serves as a template by which modern instances of genocide have followed, including those that have taken place in Africa, South America and most recently with the Yazidi people in Iraq. This reflection in modern times will also be a core component of the new educational curriculum.

The new program will be broken into three segments for educators:

Teach: including tools to teach the Holocaust by Bullets such as Yahad-In Unum’s interactive map of execution sites, pedagogical themes such as the Jewish resistance against the Holocaust by Bullets, and multidisciplinary pedagogy including educational use of video and written survivor testimony.

Learn: a detailed overview for educators of prewar life and mass shootings of Soviet Jewry during WWII, the specifics of the Holocaust by Bullets, including the timeline, diversity of victims, 5 steps of the killing process and causation. Examination of the Roma genocide will also be taught, including persecution during WWII and fates of Romanian and Soviet Roma.

Apply: includes tools for teachers to reflect on today’s mass crimes and genocides using the Holocaust by Bullets as a model.

Educators and Learning Institutions interested in learning more or incorporating the new program into their curriculum can contact Patrice Bensimon, Director
Yahad - In Unum’s Research Center at p.bensimon@yahadinunum.org.

About Yahad - In Unum

Yahad - In Unum Yahad combines the Hebrew word which means “together”, with the Latin phrase In Unum, which means “one.” Founded in 2004 by Father Patrick Desbois, the organization is dedicated to identifying and documenting sites killings against Jews and Gypsies during World War throughout Eastern Europe. Yahad-In Unum is an organization not affiliated with politics, does not defend any economic or military action, or promote any legal sanction. Its mission is to discover facts of genocidal practices wherever they are and provide a voice of protest on behalf of all victims of genocide and mass violence. www.yahadinunum.org