Second-generation Holocaust survivors: Psychological, theological, and moral challenges

ABSTRACT

Drawing from trauma theory, psychodynamic conceptualization, developmental psychology, clinical data, and personal experience, this article portrays a life haunted by tragedy predating its victims. Healthy child development is outlined, with particular attention to socialization and theological perspectives. Key characteristics of trauma are delineated, highlighting the nuances of trauma that are most harmful. As is the case with general trauma, Holocaust survivors are described as evincing survivor’s guilt and paranoia in response to their experiences. Divergent disorders resulting from the Holocaust are described for 1st-generation and 2nd-generation survivors, respectively. Primary trauma responses and pervasive attitudes of survivors are shown to have harmful ramifications on their children’s personality and worldview as well as on their interpersonal and theistic object relations. These limitations translate into problems in the adult lives of second generation survivors.

KEYWORDS:

• second-generation
• Holocaust survivors
• psychological, theological
• moral

Notes

^1. I was born to survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and raised in an insular community of concentration camp/death camp survivors and their families. The clinical bases of this article derive from my personal experiences with, and treatment of, first- and second-generation survivors. The analytic conceptualizations are grounded in my intensive research and intervention with traumatized and character-disordered patients and were elaborated in the supervision of practitioners specializing in psychiatric problems of second-generation survivors.

^2. This article focuses on children of adults who survived death camps. Many of its elements may not relate to those whose parents were teenage or child survivors, and it does not deal with the Holocaust experiences of other individuals, such as those who hid, passed as non-Jews, escaped, were in labor camps, or joined the partisans.

^3. Guntrip (1976) actually emended object relations theory to include the possibility of a retreat from object relations. This entails a defensive withdrawal to a personality style of avoiding relationships (a schizoid position), which can occur developmentally when the environment becomes overwhelming.

^4. Kestenberg (1980) reported, “Parents who survived starvation continued to worry about feeding their children as it were a matter of life and death” (p. 781).

^5. I argue, however, that the developmental directionality of icon transmutation in childhood—from father to God—does not dictate the same directionality in adulthood. My conceptualization of psychic continuities is completely symmetrical in its structure. It is therefore postulated that in cases in which an empowered father would inculcate a child with a profoundly weakened God representation, the result would inevitably engender a weakened internalized father object representation as well.