Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence

"Skillfully explores what steps can be taken in the wake of mass atrocities. . . . Incisive and insightful."

—Jane Lampman, The Christian Science Monitor




The rise of collective violence and genocide is the twentieth century's most terrible legacy. Martha Minow, a Harvard law professor and one of our most brilliant and humane legal minds, offers a landmark book on our attempts to heal after such large-scale tragedy. Writing with informed, searching prose of the extraordinary drama of the truth commissions in Argentina, East Germany, and most notably South Africa; war-crime prosecutions in Nuremberg and Bosnia; and reparations in America, Minow looks at the strategies and results of these riveting national experiments in justice and healing.
"Compassionate and well-reasoned. . . . Minow makes a convincing case for the restorative power of speaking about trauma."


—Alexandra Starr, Washington Monthly
"At the close of this century of death camps, killing fields and desaparecidos, there is perhaps no more urgent question than the one raised in Martha Minow's useful new book: Can societies recover from mass atrocity without falling prey to the legacies of a violent past?"


—Marguerite Feitlowitz, DRCLAS News
"[An] enlightening exploration of a thorny subject."


—Kirkus Reviews

Although mass atrocities are not unique to the 20th century, organized response to such violence has taken new forms, some of which offer hope of some small redress to the victims of war and genocide. In the groundbreaking and timely Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Harvard Law School professor Martha Minow explores the benefits and drawbacks of a variety of forms of settlement.

For those who have recoiled in horror and outrage at collective violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and elsewhere, this book--with chapters titled "Trials," "Truth Commissions," "Reparations," and "Facing History"--is a primer on how the world, and individuals, might respond to such acts once the shock subsides. Minow resists the idea that compensatory measures such as war-crimes tribunals and financial payback can ever bring true closure for those who have suffered. "Legal responses," she writes, "are inevitably frail and insufficient." Nevertheless, Minow advocates addressing these atrocities in a formal way: "The victimized deserve the acknowledgment of their humanity," she asserts, "and the reaffirmation of the utter wrongness of its violation." --Maria Dolan