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EmailMyths and Realities About Offspring of Holocaust Survivors: An Overview of Research Findings
Simone Gorko, M.S.
Philadelphia, U.S.A.
Forty-one years have passed since the liberation of Hitler's death camps. At liberation a shocked world viewed the remnants of European Jewry. Of the 8,255,000 Jews in Europe in September 1939, six million, including 1,500,000 children, were killed (Levin, 1968). The survivors returned to a world that was unprepared to deal with what had happened to them, and, to the victim's shock and disbelief, seemed not to care. They left the camps, the woods, their hiding places, and searched for those who had also survived. In some cases they found no one, in others they found relatives and friends from before the war.
Virtually no family survived intact. Husbands and wives searched for each other. Parents sought children that they had placed into hiding with Christian families or in Christian orphanages. Everyone searched for their parents and siblings. They wandered across Europe in great hordes (Schiff, 1984), having no home to go to, no country that wanted them. They returned to the cities of their birth and found themselves unwanted. They banded together in Displaced Persons (DP) Camps to try to begin life again. Many married quickly and immediately tried to replace their lost families with each other and with children of their own. Herzog (1982) states, "...survivors often have an intense and overwhelming wish to create something new. To replace, to refute, to undo and go on may become the overriding motif in a marriage of survivors." (p. 105) Survivors took their new families to new lands and set to work rebuilding their lives. For many years the world, including mental health professionals, took little notice of this group.
Some notice occurred when in 1954 the German government passed a law in which they proposed to make reparation payments to those who had suffered in the Holocaust. In order to qualify for these payments, the individual had to undergo extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations to prove that the Nazis had damaged them. This was the first time that the psychiatric community had contact with large numbers of survivors, and led to a description of a "survivor syndrome" (Niederland, 1964; Krystal, 1968). This syndrome includes depression, apathy, chronic anxiety and fear of renewed persecution, which could, under stress, become paranoia. Survivors were found to have many somatic complaints, nightmares with Holocaust content, and insomnia. The psychiatrists also described "survivor guilt," i.e. feeling guilty for surviving when so many had died. Very few of the survivors received any treatment for these difficulties.
Beginning in 1966 reports about children of survivors (COS) began to appear in the clinical literature. Vivian Rakoff (Rakoff, Sigal & Epstein, 1966) noticed that COS made up a disproportionally large number of admissions to a psychiatric unit. This was a major breakthrough in that it was the first time anyone considered that the Holocaust might have an impact on the lives of the second generation. It began a trend toward trying to understand the special needs of COS. Unfortunately, it also encouraged a view of them as a group that had major psychopathology. This view led Barocas and Barocas (1973) to suggest that the second generation suffered from the same syndrome as their parents.
Currently, there are two schools of thought about this group. The first comes from the clinical literature and states that COS have many psychological problems. This literature supports a child of survivor syndrome, but these studies are based on small samples or clinical material, and have serious methodological flaws (Solkoff, 1981). The second comes from more methodologically sound studies (many of which are the doctoral dissertations of the second generation) and shows that COS have the same range of problems as any control group to which they have been compared (Blumenthal, 1981)
Leon, et al.'s study (1981) supports the normalcy view. They studied both survivors (N=52) and their children (N=47) and compared their adjustment to persons with similar European and religious background (N=29) and their children (N=16). There were no significant differences between the COS and the control group on any of the psychological variables or in their attitudes and behavior toward their parents. Based upon their findings the authors question both the survivor syndrome and the child of survivor syndrome.
The normalcy view is also supported by Rustin (1971) who compared 77 COS and 77 matched controls. Using a number of measures of personality, Jewish identity, and a demographic questionnaire, he reported no significant differences between the two groups.
Another study which disputes the "child of survivor" syndrome is the doctoral dissertation of Zoli Zlotogorski (1982). A COS group (N=73) and comparison group (N=68) were compared on demographic data, the Satisfaction with Wellbeing Questionnaire, the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales, and a questionnaire developed by the researcher. No support for the "child of survivor" syndrome nor for uniformly pathological survivor families was found.
The Group for the Psychoanalytic Study of the Effect of the Holocaust on the Second Generation has done extensive study of reports on the psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy of COS (Bergmann & Jacovy, 1982) and provides support for the normality of the second generation. Although this psychoanalytic group tried to find the "child of survivor" syndrome, they were unable to do so. Instead they outline a "common matrix" in the second generation, stating:
Although there is general agreement that a definitive survivor's-child syndrome has not emerged...there does seem to be a similarity both in content and in metapsychological features. For example, the question of how a parent survived - whether he or she was guilty, base, betrayer, or hero - becomes a central theme in the analysis of survivors' children. Another central theme is the preoccupation with specific experiences of the parents, such as starvation, details of persecution, and loss of family members. It is almost universal for a child of a survivor family to grapple with the conflict of whether one should dwell on the Holocaust or whether to forget it. These themes are not necessarily conscious in patients, and many layers are present that require patient analysis and working through...The theme of survival may not appear in an analysis but, instead, may color every experience, as if it were always of immediate concern. It can thus affect the quality of the drives, the ego, and the superego and, in doing so, is an extremely important aspect of a survivors' children's fantasies and the structure of the psyche may be part of a normal survivor's-child complex. (p. 44)
Although the literature supports differences in COS that are not pathological, some issues are present which may be addressed in a therapeutic manner. The second generation reports feeling different, alienated, conflicted about relationships with their parents, ambivalent about their inheritance and roots and often not feeling as fulfilled as the conditions of their lives would permit (Meed, 1983). They are reported to be closer to their parents and having more difficulty in separating from them. In a study of engagement in survivor families, Podietz et al. (1984), found that COS were protective of their parents and acted in a protective manner at an earlier age than their American Jewish peers.
In the course of our study, we were impressed by how frequently "American" subjects, when asked, "Have you ever found yourself acting like a parent to your parents?" would say, "Can you explain what you mean by that?" This never happened with a Holocaust subject [COS]; they knew immediately what we meant.
They also found that COS called or visited their parents significantly more than the control subjects, which, in their opinion, indicated a need for maintaining bonding with their parents. This closeness may have negative effects if it interferes with their ability to establish close relationships with others outside the family of origin.
Fogelman and Savran (1980) outlined seven psychosocial effects in children of survivors that must addressed in therapy with this group. These are
1) a need to identify with parents' suffering in order to understand them better and feel more intimate with them;
2) difficulty in communicating with parents about the atrocities they suffered for fear of causing themselves and their parents pain, or of discovering to what lengths their parents had to go in order to survive;
3) conflict between the need to express themselves openly and the attempt to protect their parents from further suffering by remaining silent about their own pain and anger;
4) struggle with the fantasy of compensating their parents for the loss of family, friends, and entire communities;
5) problems in coping with their own rage, shame, mistrust, guilt, fears, or scarred feelings because of what happened to their parents;
6) inability to mourn people they never knew; and
7) a search for a personal way to express their thoughts and feelings about the Holocaust and develop continuity with their family's past.
Children of survivors also commonly report dreams, fantasies, and associations that have Holocaust content, ex. believing they are riding cattle cars on the way to concentration camps rather than the subway on which they are, in reality, riding on their way to school (Epstein, 1979). These fantasies must be understood in their Holocaust context and not seen as delusional material.
Individual psychotherapy with COS must explore the effects of the Holocaust on the client's life. Children of survivors need to incorporate representations of both the real and fantasized experiences of their parents and can only do so when the therapist is able to listen to and understand the material they present.
Non-traditional therapies, like support or consciousness raising groups, have also been found to be of great benefit for COS (Fogelman & Savran, 1979, 1980; Meadow, 1982; Kinsler, 1981). In these groups they may explore with other children of survivors' areas of commonality and difference and overcome feelings of alienation.
References
Barocas, H. A., & Barocas, C. B. (1973). Manifestations of concentration camp effects on the second generation. American Journal of Psychiatry,130(7), 820- 821.
Bergmann, M., & Jacovy, M. E. (Eds.). (1982). Generations of the Holocaust. New York: Basic Books.
Blumenthal, N. (1981). Factors contributing to varying levels of adjustment among children of Holocaust survivors. Dissertation Abstracts Interna- tional, 42, 1596B.
Epstein, H. (1979). Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with sons and daughters of survivors. New York: G. P. Putnam's.
Fogelman, E. & Savran, B. (1979). Therapeutic groups for children of Holocaust survivors. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 29, 211-236.
Fogelman, E. & Savran, B. (1980). Brief group therapy with offspring of Holocaust survivors: Leaders' reactions. American Journal of Ortho- psychiatry, 50(1), 96-108.
Herzog, J. (1982). World Beyond Metaphor: Thoughts on the Transmission of Trauma. In M. S. Bergmann & M. E. Jacovy (Eds.), Generations of the Holocaust (pp. 103-119). New York: Basic Books.
Kinsler, F. (1981). Second generation effects of the Holocaust: The effective- ness of group therapy in the resolution of the transmission of parental trauma. Journal of Psychology and Judaism, 6(1), 53-67.
Krystal, H. (Ed.). (1968). Massive psychic trauma. New York: International Universities Press.
Leon, G. R., et al. (1981). Survivors of the Holocaust and their children: Current status and adjustment. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 41(3), 503-516.
Levin, N. (1968). The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. New York: Schocken Books.
Meadow, D. A. (1982). The preparatory interview: A client-focused approach with children of Holocaust survivors. Social Work with Groups, 4(3/4), 135-144.
Meed, R. G. (1983, May). The search for kinship groups for the second generation. Paper presented at the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Washington
Niederland, W. C. (1964). Psychiatric disorders among persecution victims: A contribution to the understanding of concentration camp pathology and its after-effects. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1964, 139, 458-474.
Podietz, L., Zwerling, I., Ficher, I., Belmont, H., Eisenstein, T., Shapiro, M., & Levick, M. (1984). Engagement in families of Holocaust survivors. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 10(1), 43-51. Rakoff, V., Sigal, J. J., & Epstein, N. B. (1966). Children and families of concentration camp survivors. Canada's Mental Health, 14, 24-26.
Rustin, S. (1971). Guilt, hostility and Jewish identification amongst adolescent children of concentration camp survivors. Comprehensive Dissertation Index, 1861-1972 (University Microfilms No. 71-24810).
Schiff, G. (1984, November). Post-Liberation Experiences of Survivors of the Holocaust. Paper presented at the Group Skills with Survivors and Their Children Training Program, Training Institute for Mental Health Practitioners, New York.
Solkoff, N. (1981). Children of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: A critical review of the literature. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 51(1), 29-42.
Zlotogorski, Z. (1982). Offspring of concentration camp survivors: The relationship of perceptions of family cohesion and adaptability to levels of ego functioning. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 3452B.