us-005578-irn36907-irn42866
has record set type: Item
has or had holder: us-005578
date: 2005 August 17, 1941 June-1942
has or had some members with language: fra
scope and content: 337 discharged bullet casings, and a contemporary archeological bag used to transport them, recovered in 2005 by Yahad-In Unum at a mass execution site in Khvativ, a small village in the Lvivska province of Ukraine. A casing contains propellant and primer, and holds the bullet in place. Several of the casings have a headstamp marking the German and Polish manufacturer, location, year, batch, and material. In September 1939, following Germany's invasion of Poland, the Lvivska province was occupied by the Soviet Union pursuant to the terms of the German-Soviet Pact. In late June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, a surprise attack on Russia. The military assault was coordinated with killing squads whose goal was the Final Solution, the elimination of all Jews from the conquered territories. With the assistance of trained collaborators and the local populace, the goal was achieved through deportations to killing centers and mass executions throughout the region. The lack of adequate rail transport meant that many villages had killing fields where the Jews were shot and buried in huge ditches, along with the bullets and other evidence. Through interviews with the remaining eyewitnesses, Yahad-In Unum locates and documents these remains of a Holocaust by bullets and offers respectful remembrance for the fallen.
physical characteristics and technical requirements: The letter components in this record are assigned for cataloging purposes only. a. 337 used cylindrical brass bullet casings with a ridge near the bottom and significant orange rust and corrosion. They vary in size from fragments, to partially intact, to 13 casings intact, averaging 2.250 inches in length and 0.500 inches in diameter. Most are exploded and have metal remnants in the center. 14 casings have a headstamp engraved on the bottom. For the German manufactured casings at 12 o’clock is the manufacturer’s code with the letter P and numbers or a series of letters, at 3 o’clock is S* for a brass base, at 6 o’clock is the batch number, and at 9 o’clock is the year. For the Polish manufactured casings, at 12 o’clock are letters for the manufacturer code, at 3 o’clock is the year, at 6 o’clock are letters for the brass supplier code, and at 9 o’clock is the percentage of copper in the brass alloy. The codes below were each found on a single bullet in this group: aux S* 39 40 [Polte Armaturen-und Maschinenfabrik A.G., Magdeburg, Germany] Fer S* 5 42 [German manufacturer] P135 S* 9 37 [German manufacturer] P151 S* 14 37 [Rheinisch-Westfälische Sprengstoff A.G., Nuremberg, Germany] P163 S* 19 37 [Metallwarenfabrik Treuenbrietzen GmbH, Selterhof, Germany] P163 S* 10 37 [Metallwarenfabrik Treuenbrietzen GmbH, Selterhof, Germany] P181 S* 5 37 [Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft, Leipzig, Germany] P184 S* 21 38 [German manufacturer] P24[?]S* 20 36 [German manufacturer] P318 S* 5 39 [German manufacturer] P798 S* 9 35 [German manufacturer] PK / 34 / DZ / [?]7 [Pocisk Spolka Akcyjna, Warsaw, Poland / Dziedzice] PK / 32 / N / 67 [Pocisk, Spolka Akcyjna, Warsaw, Poland / Norblin] SB / 37 / IX / 19 / [Sellier and Bellot, Elbe, Germany] b. Rectangular, white polypropylene sack with a hemmed top opening and a reinforced, double stitched closed bottom. One side has handwritten text in black marker and a preprinted black recycling label. The reverse has a red preprinted manufacture…
type: RecordSet
identifier: irn42866
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
title: 337 discharged German and Polish manufactured bullet casings found at a mass execution site
biographical history: Father Patrick Desbois is the president of Yahad- In Unum (Together as One), an organization he co-founded in 2004 to develop and promote Christian-Jewish understanding. He is also a Roman Catholic priest and director of the Episcopal Committee for Relations with Judaism, which is connected with the French Conference of Bishops. Father Desbois was born in Chalon-sur-Saone, France, in 1955 and grew up on a farm in the Bresse region of eastern France. As a young man, he joined the French civil service and taught mathematics in West Africa. He went to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa for three months. After this, he decided to join the priesthood, a decision that shocked his secular family. He became a parish priest and studied Judaism and learned Hebrew. He asked to do outreach work with groups such as Roma, ex-prisoners, and Jews, and was appointed a liaison with the Jewish community in France. His family had lived on the farm throughout the German occupation of France during World War II, 6/25/1940-8/25/1944. His paternal grandfather, as a soldier in the French Army, had been deported by the Germans following the occupation. He was sent to Rava-Ruska prison camp, then on the Ukrainian side of the Polish border, now in Ukraine. His grandfather never talked about his experiences, but he did once comment to his grandson that, as bad as it was for French prisoners-of-war, it was much worse for other types of inmates. A maternal cousin who had been a member of the resistance was deported and killed in a German concentration camp. As an adult, he learned from his mother that the family had often hidden members of the French Resistance on the farm. Desbois was haunted by his grandfather's silence. He made repeated trips to Rava-Ruska where his grandfather had been imprisoned. On one visit, the mayor took him to the edge of the forest where a group of elderly villagers were gathered to tell him what they had witnessed. Desbois finally learned what his grandfather would n…
archival history: The bullet casing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010 by Father Patrick Desbois on behalf of Yahad-in Unum.
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