Generations after the Holocaust left its mark on the world, there are still new chapters being written about that dark moment in history. The Chicago Tribune today has news of a French priest helping to tell the story:

At first glance, Rev. Patrick Desbois seems an unlikely Holocaust investigator.

Yet this modest Roman Catholic priest from Paris, without using much more than his calm voice and Roman collar, has shattered the silence surrounding a largely untold chapter of the Holocaust when Nazis killed 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine from 1941 to 1944.

Over the past four years, Desbois has interviewed more than 700 people who witnessed the mass murders as children and never spoke about the horrors again. In village after village, witnesses led the priest to uncover more than 800 mass graves, most previously unknown. The killings were usually done by single gunshot, with Jewish children often buried alive. The dark episode is known as the “Holocaust by Bullets.”

Chicago was the first stop for Desbois, 52, on a four-city U.S. tour funded by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to educate Jews and Catholics about his findings. Desbois spoke Monday to more than 300 members of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe and Tuesday to students and religious leaders at Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park.

At the Catholic seminary, Desbois described the sensitive process of interviewing the aging witnesses, trying to get answers without passing judgment. He said many found solace in unlocking their memories for a priest. Most told their stories as if the killings happened yesterday.

“They are still very emotional because it’s the first time they speak. They never spoke before,” Desbois said. “Imagine that you are a simple person and one day they start killing everyone in your village and you are employed in that. So, they feel very bad.

“It’s a relief. But, it’s not a confessional. They feel like it’s their duty to say where the corpse is,” he said. “Their obsession is that [the bodies] have not been buried. Imagine you are young, you see 10,000 people being killed and nobody cares. … One woman told me, ‘All my life, I dreamed of somebody to tell this.'”

Desbois said his goal is to raise funds to bury the dead properly and establish a monument to the victims. The priest also wants to establish a permanent record of the Ukraine killings to help prevent genocide from happening again.

“We need to remember what happened because the next generation does not know,” he said. “We need to remember the story of anti-Semitism, so it does not happen again. We need to remember friendship between Catholics and Jews.”

At times in his presentation, his voice and hands trembled. When the audience gave him a standing ovation, he shook his head, covered his eyes and wept. Later, when asked about his emotions, Desbois said he cried for the Ukrainian witnesses and the Jewish victims, tears for the living and the dead.

“I remember all these people. I remember the dead and I remember the living. I carry them all with me now,” Desbois said.

Betsy Katz, a board member of the American Jewish Committee, was one of many in the crowd who praised Desbois.

“He has such humanity, you can almost feel it,” Katz said. “The fact that he’s not Jewish and wants to bury our people with dignity, that really struck me.”

Rev. John Pawlikowski, a Catholic Theological Union professor and longtime friend of Desbois, said the details of the Ukraine genocide are important for Jews and Catholics.

“It’s important because there was substantial Christian involvement in the executions, and I think we need to really ask serious questions about why that was and what led to that,” said Pawlikowski, who is also director of the school’s Catholic-Jewish studies program.

“Our generation can’t change that record. But, I think we need to take possession of it and say it’s part of our heritage and we must be conscious of it,” he said.

The Trib link has more on how Desbois became interested in the Holocaust, and the remarkable work he is doing.