“For me, it’s genocide”, condemns a psychologist from the Boutcha morgue

Ukrainian psychologist, Anna Dolid takes care of families at the Boutcha morgue. She tells how, forced to return several times to the rhythm of the exhumation of the bodies, the relatives are traumatized.

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She is there from morning to night: the morgue in Boutcha, near kyiv in Ukraine, has become her new office. Comforting a mother who saw her son die before her eyes, a widow… This is the daily life of Anna Dolid, a Ukrainian psychologist. Together with her colleagues, she is confronted with tragic stories every day and has to deal with these post-traumatic stresses.

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“Many people were buried in courtyards, everywhereshe explains. These bodies are still being exhumed, there are a lot of them.”.

“Sometimes families come three, four, five times to identify their loved one and it’s very traumatic.”

Anna Dolid, psychologist

at franceinfo

Families arrive flabbergasted, devastated. “The first day was very difficult. The families did not understand what was happening. They wanted to know: why the body must be exhumed, examined for so long?, says Anna Dolid. I answered them: because these are war crimes and they must be listed in order to be punished. Now people have understood the procedure and they accept. For them, there will be a second emotional wave.”.

>> Testimony. “He wanted to become a doctor”, in Boutcha, the pain of a grandmother who came to get her grandson’s death certificate

Anna Dolid has experience in post-traumatic stress: the Maidan revolution, the Donbass, eight years ago… But this conflict is different from 2014. This time the will is to annihilate. “It’s not war. For me, it’s genocide, she condemns. The Russians cannot dominate the Ukrainian military because they are intellectually weak. They have no emotionscontinues Ana Dolid. So they can only dominate by violence. They compensate for their inferiority by raping and killing.”

Words are obviously not enough to comfort families. Many ask him for painkillers so as not to sink, confides the psychologist.


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