‘I had no family, but I made family’. Immediate post-war coping strategies of adolescent survivors of the Holocaust

Abstract

Increasingly, mental health professionals are confronted with survivors of ethnic conflict and genocide, many of whom were adolescents when they experienced such extreme, prolonged trauma. Holocaust survivor interviews provide an important window into the process of post-traumatic coping and adaptation by adolescent survivors of genocide. The immediate post-genocide years have been a particularly neglected field of inquiry among trauma researchers. This study of the immediate coping strategies used by adolescent survivors of the Holocaust is part of a larger secondary analysis of the long-term coping and adaptation of 18 adolescent survivors – 14 women and four men – who were between the ages of 12 and 18 at the start of World War II. It found that the major coping strategies used in the immediate post-war period were social support, community with other survivors, revenge and the pursuit of justice. These findings have important implications for the treatment of survivors of ethnic conflict seeking asylum in countries in the West.

Keywords:

• Holocaust survivors
• post-traumatic coping
• adaptation
• adolescent survivors of genocide

Notes

1. All survivors’ names are pseudonyms.