The aftermath of the european and rwandan genocides

Abstract

Genocide, defined as 'the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group has stained human history. For example, in relatively recent times several episodes of genocide took place. In 1915, over one and a half million Armenians lost their lives at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Later, in 1933-1945, about six million Jews lost their lives in Nazi-occupied Europe and North African. More recently, in 1994, an estimated 700,000 to one million Tutsis lost their lives at the hand of the Hutus in Rwanda. There were others that have dotted the map of Asia, Central America and the Balkans. This chapter reviews the research evidence on the psychopathological aftermath of two of those episodes, the Jewish Holocaust and the Tutsi genocide in Africa.