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- The Psychological Affects of the Holocaust
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- The Holocaust was a tragic point in history which many people
- believe never happened. Others who survived it thought it should
- never have been. Not only did this affect the people who lived
- through it, it also affected everyone who was connected to those
- fortunate individuals who survived. The survivors were lucky to
- have made it but there are times when their memories and flashbacks
- have made them wish they were the ones who died instead of living
- with the horrible aftermath. The psychological effects of the
- Holocaust on people from different parts such as survivors of
- Israel and survivors of the ghettos and camps vary in some ways yet
- in others are profoundly similar. The vast number of prisoners of
- various nationalities and religions in the camps made such
- differences inevitable. Many contrasting opinions have been
- published about the victims and survivors of the holocaust based on
- the writers' different cultural backrounds, personal experiences
- and intelectual traditions. Therefore, the opinions of the authors
- of such books and entries of human behavior and survival in the
- concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe are very diverse.
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- The Survivors of the Holocaust: General Survey
- Because the traumatization of the Holocaust was both
- individual and collective, most individuals made efforts to create
- a "new family" to replace the nuclear family that had been lost.
- In order for the victims to resist dehumanization and regression
- and to find support, the members of such groups shared stories
- about the past, fantasies of the future and joint prayers as well
- as poetry and expressions of personal and general human aspirations
- for hope and love. Imagination was an important means of
- liberation from the frustrating reality by opening an outlet for
- the formulation of plans for the distant future, and by spurring to
- immediate actions.
- Looking at the history of the Jewish survivors, from the
- beginning of the Nazi occupation until the liquidation of the
- ghettos shows that there are common features and simmilar
- psychophysiological patterns in their responses to the
- persecutions. The survivors often experienced several phases of
- psychosocial response, including attempts to actively master the
- traumatic situation, cohesive affiliative actions with intense
- emotional links, and finally, passive compliance with the
- persecutors. These phases must be understood as the development of
- special mechanisms to cope with the tensions and dangers of the
- surrounding horrifying reality of the Holocaust.
- There were many speculations that survivors of the Holocaust
- suffered from a static concentration camp syndrome. These theories
- were proved to have not been valid by research that was done
- immediately after liberation. Clinical and theoretical research
- focused more on psychopathology than on the question of coping and
- the development of specific adaptive mechanisms during the
- Holocaust and after. The descriptions of the survivors' syndrome in
- the late 1950's and 1960's created a new means of diagnosis in
- psychology and the behavioral sciences, and has become a model that
- has since served as a focal concept in examining the results of
- catastrophic stress situations.
- After more research was done, it was clear the adaptation and
- coping mechanisms of the survivors was affected by the aspects of
- their childhood experiences, developmental histories, family
- constellations, and emotional family bonds. In the studies and
- research that were done, there were many questions that were asked
- of the subjects: What was the duration of the traumatization?,
- During the Holocaust, was the victim alone or with family and
- friends?, Was he in a camp or hiding?, Did he use false "Aryan"
- papers?, Was he a witness to mass murder in the ghetto or the
- camp?, What were his support systems- family and friends- and what
- social bonds did he have? These studies showed that the
- experiences of those who were able to actively resist the
- oppression, whether in the underground or among the partisans, were
- different in every way from the experiences of those who were
- victims in extermination camps.
- When the survivors integrated back into society after the war,
- they found it very hard to adjust. It was made difficult by the
- fact that they often aroused ambivalent feelings of fear,
- avoidence, guilt, pity and anxiety. This might have been hard for
- them, but decades after the Holocaust most of the survivors managed
- to rehabilitate their capacities and rejoin the paths their lives
- might have taken prior to the Holocaust. This is more true for the
- people who experienced the Holocaust as children or young adults.
- Their families live with a special attitude toward psychobiological
- continuity, fear of separation, and fear of prolonged sickness and
- death.
- The experience of the Holocaust shows how human beings can
- undergo extreme traumatic experiences without suffering from a
- total regression and without losing their ability to rehabilitate
- their ego strength. The survivors discovered the powers within
- them in whatever aspect in their lives that were needed.
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- Survivors of Ghettos and Camps
- The Jews, arrested and brought to the concentration camps
- during WWII were under sentence of death. Their chances of
- surviving the war minimal. Their brutal treatment on the part of
- the camp guards and even some of the other prisoners influenced the
- Jews.
- The months or years already spent in the ghettos, with
- continuous persecutions and random selections, had brought some to
- a chronic state of insecurity and anxiety and others to apathy and
- hopelessness, even though passive or active resistance had also
- occured. This horrible situation was worsened by overcrowding,
- infectious diseases, lack of facilities for basic hygiene and
- continuous starvation.
- When the people were transported to the concentration camps,
- they lived in horrible conditions such as filth and lack of
- hygiene, diseases and extreme nutritional insufficiency, continuous
- harassment, and physical ill treatment, perpetual psychic stress
- caused by the recurrent macabre deaths- all combined to influence
- deeply the attitudes and mental health of camp inmates.
- Observations and descriptions by former prisoners, some of whom
- were physicians and psychologists differ drastically. Some
- described resignation, curtailment of emotional and normal
- feelings, weakening of social standards, regression to primative
- reactions and "relapse to animal state" whereas others show
- feelings of comeradeship, community spirit, a persistant humanity
- and extreme altruism- even moral development and religious
- revelation.
- Afer liberation, most of the Jewish camp inmates were too weak
- to move or be aware of what was happening. Prisoners were not
- restored to perfect health by liberation. Awakening from
- nightmares was sometimes even more painful than captivity. In the
- beginning of physical improvement , the ability to feel and think
- returned and many realized the completeness of their isolation. To
- them, the reality of what had happened was agonizing. They lived
- with their overwhelming personal losses whose impact is beyond
- intellectual or emotional comprehension. They also clung to the
- hope of finding some family member still alive in the new DISPLACED
- PERSONS' camps that were now set up. Many of the people admitted to
- those camps lost all sense of initiative.
- After the war, organizations such as THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF
- and REHABILITATION ADMINISTRATION, THE JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE
- and the International Refugee Organization were founded. Their
- work was useful but their methods were not suitable. The ex-
- prisoner, now a "displaced person", was brought before boards set
- up by different countries which decided on his or her worthiness to
- be received by that country. Most survivors tried to make their
- way to Palestine. Then Israel was founded and they integrated
- quickly into a new society. The majority of the people adapted
- adequately to their changed life, in newly founded families, jobs
- and kibbutzim, many however still suffered from chronic anxiety,
- sleep disturbances, nightmares, emotional instability and
- depressive states. The worst however were those people who went to
- the United States, Canada, and Austrailia, some of them with
- extreme psychological traumatizations. They had to adjust to
- strange new surroundings, learn a new language, and adapt to new
- laws, in addition to building new lives.
- After the survivors received compensation from the West German
- government, they were examined by specialists in internal and
- neurological medicine. In most cases, no ill effects directly
- attributable to detainment in camps were found. The reason for
- this was because the repeated selection of Jewish victims for
- extermination in ghettos, on arrival at the camps, again at the
- frequent medical examinations, in the sick bays, and at every
- transferment that all those showing signs of physical disease had
- already been eliminated.
- Many survivors described themselves as incapable of living
- life to the fullest, often barely able to perform basic tasks.
- They felt that the war had changed them and they had lost their
- much needed spark to life. Investigations show that the extreme
- traumatizations of the camps inflicted deep wounds that have healed
- very slowly, and that more than 40 years later, the scars are still
- present. There has shown to be clear differences between camp
- victims and statistically comparable Canadian Jews: the survivors
- show long term consequences of the Holocaust in the form of
- psychological stress, associated with heightened sensitivity to
- anti-semitism and persecution.
- The survivors, normal people before the Holocaust, were
- exposed to situations of extreme stress and to psychic
- traumatization. Their reactions to inhuman treatment were "normal"
- because not to react to treatment of this kind would be abnormal.
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- Survivors of Israel
- There were few studies done, following the Holocaust that were
- made in Israel of the psychological effects of the Nazi persecution
- even though the number of survivors was high as time passed,
- research increased and in 1964, a comparison was made between
- Holocaust survivors now in Israel and non-Jewish Norwegians who
- returned to Norway after being deported to camps. The results
- showed that the Jewish survivors suffered more from the total
- isolation in the camps, from the danger of death, which was greater
- for Jews, and from "survivor guilt", than did the Norwegians. It
- also showed that most Israeli survivors were suffering from
- symptoms of the so called survivors syndrome, but were active and
- efficient, and often held important and responsible jobs and social
- positions.
- Another study, of Israeli Holocaust survivors in kibbutzim
- (collective settlements), revealed that survivors who could not
- mourn their losses immediately, after the war began mourning and
- working through their grief when they adjusted to life in the
- kibbutz. The study also indicated that many Holocaust survivors
- had a low threshold for emotional stress. This was brought out
- during situations that reminded them of the Holocaust- especially
- during the EICHMANN TRIAL, when they had to testify against Nazi
- criminals, and during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. These were the
- times when they suffered periods of depression and tension.
- Studies made in Israel more than 30 years after WWII did not
- show significant differences in the extent of psychological damage
- between people who were in hiding during Nazi occupation and former
- concentration camp inmates. The only difference that was found was
- that the inmates experienced more pronounced emotional distress
- than those who survived the occupation outside the camps.
- The research done on the elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel
- indicated that they encountered particular difficulties in
- absorption because of the serious problems they had to overcome
- (loss of family and of the social and cultural backround they had
- known before the Holocaust). The community in Israel tried to
- provide them with personal and professional care. Nevertheless, to
- those survivors who immigrated to Israel when elderly it was more
- difficult to adjust than the younger survivors.
- There was also a study done in the University Psychiatric
- Hospital in Jerusalem 40 years after liberation. It revealed a
- difference between hospitalized depressive patients who had been
- inmates of Nazi concentration camps and the match group of patients
- who had not been persecuted. The camp survivors were more
- belligerent, demanding, and regressive than the control group.
- Oddly enough their behavior may have helped their survival.
- Despite the many hardships and difficulties faced by the
- survivors in Israel, their general adjustment has been
- satisfactory, both vocationally and socially. In the end it has
- been more successful than that of Holocaust survivors in other
- countries.
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- When looking at it from a general point of view, the
- survivors, for the most part have shown to be as strong as humanly
- possible. Not one person who hasn't seen what they saw can
- possibly imagine how they feel. Many people are greatly affected
- by things the survivors would consider menial. There is no other
- way they are supposed to act. These people were lucky to have
- survived but there is no doubt that there have been times when
- their memories have made them think otherwise.
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- BIBLIOGRAPHY
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- Bettelheim,B. The Informed Heart. Glencoe, Ill.,1960
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- Des Pres,T. The Survivor:An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps.
- New York, 1976
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- Dimsdale,J.E.,ed. Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators:Essays on
- the Nazi Holocaust. New York, 1980.
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- Eitinger, L., Concentration Camp Survivors in Norway and Israel.
- London, 1964.
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- Krystal, H.,ed., Massive Psychic Trauma. New York 1968.
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- Lifton, R.J."The Concept ofm the Survivor." in Survivors, Victims,
- and Perpetrators:Essays on the Nazi Holocaust, edited by J.E.
- Dimsdale, pp.106-125. New York, 1980.
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- THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS
- OF THE
- HOLOCAUST
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- Rabbi Stern
- Antoanela Ciomo
- Gari Fox
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