4/11/2024 0 Comments Holocaust intergenerational trauma![]() Instead, we have shifted the focus away from value-laden judgments of psychological health to the issue of knowledge, and have come to view both generations as heterogeneous and therefore as consisting of individuals with different kinds and degrees of Holocaust knowledge. In the growing polemic between those who stress the negative effects of trauma (e.g., Krystal, 1968), and those who focus on survivors’ strengths and coping skills (e.g., Harel, Kahana, & Kahana, 1988), our body of work (e.g., Auerhahn & Laub, 1984, 1987, 1990 Auerhahn & Prelinger, 1983 Laub & Auerhahn, 1984, 1985, 1989 Peskin, Auerhahn, & Laub, 1997) has rejected the polarization of researchers into those who claim that no (ill) effects of the Holocaust are to be found in survivors and their children versus those who claim that there are (negative) effects. What the extensive clinical and research material on the Holocaust-its contradictions as much as its consistencies-has taught us is the diversity of meanings of Holocaust suffering for both generations that can neither be accounted for by narrow psychopathological diagnoses (Bergmann & Jacovy, 1982) nor be contradicted by survivors’ and their children’s undeniable resiliency and coping. This stance also has made it difficult to integrate the Holocaust literature with the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) literature (that followed it), which appears thus far not to have been similarly burdened with the accusation that to explore negative effects is to pathologize and demean survivors. But seeking to correct this early bias wherein Holocaust suffering is equated with psychopathology has, often enough, also created an overcorrection that discourages understanding the Holocaust as a core existential and relational experience for both generations. Such an unbending formulation has understandably aroused readers’ strong skepticism and ambivalence, in part because to expose the magnitude of the Nazi destruction is to confirm Hitler’s posthumous victory (Danieli, 1984, 1985). A critical backlash has also been evident (Roseman & Handle-man, 1993 Whiteman, 1993), even from among the children themselves (Peskin, 1981), against the penchant of the early Holocaust literature to formulate the transmission of deep psychopathology from one generation to the next. An example of this postmemory art is American novelist Art Spiegelman’s “ Maus.The literature on Holocaust survival and second-generation effects has been prone to controversy beyond criticisms of research methodology, sample selection, and generalizability of findings (e.g., Solkoff, 1992). She looks at traumatic memories being transferred through fiction, art, memoir and testimony. ![]() These memories are transmitted so deeply that they become the memories of the second generation themselves.Īccording to Hirsch, descendants of survivors may “remember” past trauma though stories, mannerisms and images. Scholar Marianne Hirsch shows in her “postmemory” work how trauma is transmitted to the children of survivors. My research looks at how traumatic memory is transmitted down through the generations. The very act of remembering brings these events into the present and makes them relevant to our own times. ![]() Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander says the memory of these events provides lessons for the future. The day has also been used to speak about the unprecedented refugee crises in other parts of the world, such as the attacks on civilians in Syria. In 2018, the day specifically explored the theme of shared responsibility. In recent years, the focus of the United Nations has ranged from issues such as violence against women and children to increasing tolerance. For example, the central theme of 2010 was about Holocaust survivors and what future generations can learn from them.Īs the world confronts more crimes against humanity, growing nationalism and global refugee crises, keeping the memory of the Holocaust has become increasingly important because it can bring awareness to contemporary atrocities. Since 2010, the United Nations has set specific themes to not only remember past crimes, but prevent future ones.
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