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Full-Text Articles in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Collective Healing: Towards A Conceptual Framework, Garrett Thomson Dec 2021

Collective Healing: Towards A Conceptual Framework, Garrett Thomson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

To understand what kind of collective healing practices might be most effective following mass atrocity, we need to comprehend better what counts as collective healing, and in what ways group healing processes differ from individual ones. We need clear and well-argued answers to these conceptual questions as a basis for deriving the criteria by which we might evaluate various practices in different contexts. Because means are valuable only in relation to ends, judging their effectiveness requires a definition of the ends in question and what is good about them. So, what counts as a good collective healing process? This conceptual …


Ongoing Genocides And The Need For Healing: The Cases Of Native And African Americans, Benjamin P. Bowser, Carl O. Word, Kate Shaw Dec 2021

Ongoing Genocides And The Need For Healing: The Cases Of Native And African Americans, Benjamin P. Bowser, Carl O. Word, Kate Shaw

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The elimination of Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans in the U.S. more than qualify as acts of historical state sponsored genocide. A feature of both genocides is that they ended as institutional practices but have continued culturally and psychologically. The primary contemporary legacy of these genocides is racism which reinforces historical trauma and grief. Suggestions are made for how healing for Native and African Americans can begin despite ongoing racism. This includes psychological counseling for White Americans with beliefs in White supremacy. Suggestions are also made for how reconciliation can begin at the county-level between descendants of slave …


A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary Dec 2021

A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth …


The Healing Of Historical Collective Trauma, Eugen Koh May 2021

The Healing Of Historical Collective Trauma, Eugen Koh

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical collective trauma is embedded in the shared consciousness of a collective, which can be considered as being the collective’s culture. The healing of historical collective trauma is a most complex and challenging task. At the core of it is a collective process of working through painful and overwhelming experiences, which is only possible in a safe and supportive environment. This process involves remembering and making sense of defined events and depends on the possession of a capable and authentic “collective thinking apparatus,” which is proposed here, to be a function of a collective’s culture. The healing of single, …


Let Me Be Myself, Brandon Stettenbenz Dec 2019

Let Me Be Myself, Brandon Stettenbenz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Let Me Be Myself is a collection of short stories, essays, oral history, and poems that deals with generational trauma, history, traveling, family, war, oppression, and healing. This project serves to inform, evoke understanding, lend perspective, and inspire others. It aims to help others understand the trauma of being born from a Holocaust surviving family, and its impact on somebody in modern day society. It explores the story of a first, second, and third generation Holocaust refugee. It connects a timeline of eighty years of trauma through violence and oppression, and a pursuit to find healing from Nazi Germany.