Ben Gurion University awarded the Ladislav Last Ecumenical Prize for Tolerance and Religious and Social Understanding on Monday to Father Patrick Desbois, president of the Yahad–In Unum Association, who has devoted his life to confronting antisemitism and furthering Catholic-Jewish understanding.
Since 2001, he has led a team which has identified 800 of an estimated 2,000 mass graves and sites at which 1.5 million Jews were killed in the Ukraine during the Holocaust. They are also collecting artifacts and recording video testimonies from eyewitnesses, which will become part of the permanent collection at the United State Holocaust Museum, which has assisted the project.