Cloth: 978-0-472-07855-4

Paper: 978-0-472-05855-6

eISBN: 978-0-472-90639-0 (OA)

For decades, genocide education has focused primarily on prevention, identifying early warning signs and intervening before mass atrocities unfold. But when prevention fails, reconciliation becomes a post-genocide concern, leaving societies in a suspended state of trauma, mistrust, and fragmentation. Interrupting Genocide provides a practical framework to challenge that gap. Grounded in social identity theory and built from years of research and fieldwork, the Social Identity Model for Reconciliation reimagines reconciliation as a dynamic process that can begin during genocide, not as an after practice.

Drawing on powerful, real-life testimonies from survivors, former perpetrators, and second-generation youth from the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, the book examines how identity, belonging, and group behavior contribute to violence as well as the possibility of repair. At its core, the book reveals how group dynamics such as dehumanization, polarization, and stigmatization evolve through conflict, and how targeted reconciliation strategies can disrupt these patterns in real time. From faith-based healing and intergroup dialogue to economic reintegration and grassroots community practices, the book offers practical pathways for rebuilding fractured social bonds. Accessible, deeply human, and urgent in its message, Interrupting Genocide provides theoretical insight and real-world tools to rethink how societies heal.

Jocelyn R. Barrett is Program Coordinator of the Visiting Scholar Programs in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

License: CC BY-NC