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Yahad - In Unum (YIU) (“Together in One”) is a French organization founded to locate the sites of of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile killing units, especially the Einsatzgruppen, in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Moldova. It was founded in Paris in 2004 by leaders in the French Roman Catholic and Jewish communities. YIU is led by Father Patrick Desbois, a Catholic priest whose grandfather was a French soldier deported to the Nazi internment Rava-Ruska, located in a Ukrainian town that borders Poland. Its United States fundraising branch is known as the American Friends of Yahad - In Unum.
In 2009, he received Honorary degree from Hebrew University and Bar Ilan, 2012 from the New York University.
Dr. Richard Prasquier is the vice president of the Yahad-In Unum Board. He is the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions and a member of the World Jewish Congress and the International Jewish Committee on Inter-religious Consultations.
David Black is the president of American Friends of Yahad-In Unum. Black is the associate vice president for Institutional Advancement at Yeshiva University. He is the former director of the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan and executive director of the Alliance Francaise in New York.
YIU approaches its work on two fronts—archival research and research trips. The archival research is primarily undertaken by PhD and Graduate school in the United States and Germany. The researchers spend several months at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where they study the Soviet Union archives of the Extraordinary State Commission of 1944 and the archives from the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Ludwigsburg, Germany.
After the research is complete, an 11-person team, usually led by Patrick Desbois, travels to Belarus and Ukraine to collect testimonial and forensic evidence of the murders. Each trip lasts 15–20 days. The team includes a photographer, ballistics expert, translators, drivers, daily report recorders, a witness interviewer and camera operator. During each trip, the team travels from village to village, where they interview and film the surviving eyewitnesses, using testimony of witnesses to discover the locations of the graves. Once the graves are located, the team uses high-tech equipment to obtain forensic evidence that validates the testimonies. When the team returns to Paris, the translated video testimony and the physical evidence is archived.
In June 2014, YIU published its ten-year anniversary book. Called Broad Daylight, the book encapsulates the horror of the Jewish genocide in which Germans in Eastern Europe massacred the Jews in broad daylight. The bilingual book (written in French and English) covers each territory that the organization has researched, splitting each into a chapter. These include, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Romania, Moldova and Lithuania.
The organization is also expanding InEvidence, an interactive map on its website, on which users can see the extent to which the Nazis attempted to wipe out the Jewish population in remote villages. The map covers all the countries in which the organization has expanded its research. It enables users to choose a specific country and location and to read information about the testimonies and/or watch a video regarding the town's mass murder.
The organization currently collects accounts of eyewitnesses of Russian war crimes. As of May 2023, this work had already identified 62 witnesses or victims of bombings, 45 witnesses of murders and other violences, 23 witnesses of acts of torture and hostage taking, 14 witnesses of pillaging and thefts, 10 witnesses or victims of expulsion and/or forced screening, and 2 witnesses of sexual violence.
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