The 29th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is opening today in Philadelphia. The following excerpt from an article at philly.com sheds some light on this event.
For the last six years, the Rev. Patrick Desbois has traveled the back roads of Ukraine, knocking at huts and farmhouses, asking their elderly occupants to speak to him of the unspeakable.
Tonight, before an expected audience of hundreds at the opening of the 29th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, this soft-spoken Frenchman, a Roman Catholic priest, will relay the horrors and shame he found hidden there.
“Most people try to forget the genocide [of the Holocaust] in order to sleep,” Desbois said in an interview Friday. “We try to awaken them.”
The conference, which continues through Friday at the Sheraton Philadelphia Center City Hotel, will not dwell on the Holocaust. With walking tours and workshops bearing titles such as “Mapping Madness” and “The Role of Philadelphia Jews in the Rise of Basketball,” its overall tone is buoyant and industrious.
