First international symposium on the Holocaust of Jews in Ukraine held in Paris

PARIS (EJP)---The first international conference on the Holocaust of Jews in Ukraine has opened on Monday at the Sorbonne university in Paris.

It is organized by the Paris Shoah Memorial in collaboration with other similar institutions.

About 1,5 million Jews in Ukraine were exterminated between 1941 and 1944, after the invasion of Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.

The Shoah in Ukraine had not been studied during many years and only recently became a "new" subject.

The main interest of this symposium is that it is the first time that Ukrainian researchers come abroad to share their works and meet international researchers, organizers said.

At the opening of the two-day symposium, participants underlined that research was very difficult until the the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

A French Catholic priest, Father Patrick Desbois, who heads the Research centre on Shoah in the east, undertook at the beginning of 2000 a systematic work of identifying the sites in Ukraine where Jews were exterminated during WWII.

He said he wanted "to reach the truth on what took place".

More than 500 common graves of the "Shoah by bullets"- the massive fusillades of Jews - could be located thanks to testimonies gathered in the Ukrainian countryside.

During two days, some 30 French, German, Ukrainian, American and Israeli historians will confront their works on "the role played by the Ukrainians", " the techniques of the murderers "or testimonies gathered on the ground.

Participation of 7 Ukrainian researchers is supported by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. Victor Pinchuk, a philanthropist and one of the most successful businessman and industrialist in Ukraine, has co-produced in 2006 with American director Steven Spielberg a documentary film about the Shoah in Ukraine.

Tilted "Spell Your Name," this film is devoted to explain the Holocaust to young Ukrainian scholars.

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