After more than 12 years of field investigation on the Holocaust by Bullets and contemporary mass crime, Yahad – In Unum’s exhibit “Women at the Frontline of Mass Violence Worldwide” aims to give a voice to women who were victims of genocide. The installment features research and stories of mass violence survivors from various regions and periods, such as: 

• The extermination of Jews by Einsatzgruppen (mobile-killing units) in the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories during WWII.  

• The genocide of the Roma people in Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1944. 

• The attacks and massacres of the indigenous communities during Guatemala’s armed conflict between 1960 and 1996. 

• The Yazidi genocide in Iraq and Syria by ISIS militants in the mid-2010s 

The temporary exhibition, housed at the east wing of the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building (ATC) through March 8, features nineteen intimate portraits (each 24 by 36 inches) and testimonial excerpts in text and video of women who survived state-sponsored atrocities. 

The brutality inflicted upon women during genocide and mass violence is specific and shares similarities from one conflict to another. Unfortunately, the individual experiences of the women remain unspoken and unstudied in historiography, while women are systematically targeted by perpetrators of mass violence, humiliated in distinct measures, raped, deprived of their motherhood, sterilized, and used as slaves.