About Jewishness

The effects of antisemitism, pogroms, persecution, war, occupation, exile and Holocaust

Hugh Rosen writes:
"Regarding Holocaust survivors, I would like to introduce a controversial subject that is debated amongst psychotherapists, in particular amongst psychiatrists, psychologists, and clinical social workers. There are those, cutting across all three disciplines, holding the view that holocaust survivors who have demonstrated psychopathology subsequent to liberation are all people who have had mental disorders prior to internment that predisposed them to the psychic problems they later experienced. Other professionals maintain that such is not necessarily the case and that the trauma of concentration camp life provides a sufficient basis for the symptoms displayed by the survivors. It is my position that the latter assertion is correct. Further, I think that the former view constitutes an unwarranted assumption and even a presumptuous one. It would be difficult to advance hard evidence to support it, since there is no way in retrospect to conduct a scientific experiment verifying it. Consequently, the conclusion rests upon mere speculation. The atrocious conditions and inhumane living in concentration camps and the atrocities committed within them, are, in my opinion, sufficient to produce psychological disorders in even the most psychologically healthy individuals.
Many Jews who survived the Holocaust were often placed in untenable, even unbearable, positions in which they were faced with choices of survival by betraying their own families or fellow compatriots. Holocaust survivors often tended to exclusively be comfortable only with others who had survived. Non-Jews were looked upon with suspicion and not to be trusted. A tacit code of silence prevailed in the families they formed so that the second-generation children were protected from the atrocities their parents had been subjected to. Another reason for the silence was to protect themselves from exposing the utter humiliations that they had endured while in the camps. They did not wish their children to know of this.
It was not uncommon for survivors to emerge from the camps as hypochondriacal. Their symptoms were converted into psychosomatic disorders. As a result, visits to the doctor for physical treatment frequently occurred for problems that were psychic in origin. They can be plagued by tenacious memories throughout their lives and visited by nightmares like unwelcome guests that long overstay their time.
Parents of Holocaust survivors commonly proved to be overly protective of their children, which led to the restraining of the children's range of allowable behaviors, much to his or her frustration. Second generation children growing up were often protective of their parents, in turn. Sometimes they were made to feel guilty for raising their own normal developmental concerns. Survivor parents when hearing from their children about the problems they were encountering would respond by pointing out that such issues were nothing compared to what their parents had gone through during the Holocaust. Hence, the code of silence would eventually become bilateral. Many second generation children, painfully aware of the past suffering their parents had been forced to live through, internalized their parents comparisons of the two sets of problems, leading the children to feel ashamed of bringing up their own concerns or to remain silent so as to protect their parents from having to listen to such "trivial" matters. The families were often symbiotic in nature, making it difficult for the children to separate and individuate as happens as a part of normal adolescent development in the thrust toward the approach of early adulthood.
Second-generation children, through transmission of their parents' earlier trauma in the concentration camps, not uncommonly resulted in their own distrust of the outside world and made close relationships with peers difficult to come by.
Nothing I have written here should be misconstrued as criticism of Holocaust survivors. They were compelled to live, if, indeed, they could manage to do so, in an evil environment of daily horrors that no human being should ever have to endure. As for their children, they were caught in a web of trauma transmission, by virtue of their second-generation status, that was inescapable. Further, each survivor, child, and family had their own individual identity, so that not everything said here can be applied as a generalization across the board.
Most importantly of all, many survivors and their families, despite their lingering psychic injuries went on to lead lives of hope, renewal, and success. One has only to witness the life of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who went on to provide the world with moral leadership and has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sadly, genocide is not an evil from mid-Twentieth Century only. It continues to persist, involving other ethnic, racial, and religious groups. The global reawakening of anti-Semitism is itself a threat."

It is clear to me that there must be third-generation of Holocaust survivors, and even fourth-generation.

The intergenerational transmission of trauma symptoms in children of Holocaust survivors
Tamar Bauman, Pace University
"Research has shown that individuals who experience an event that shatters their assumptions of the world may develop a host of trauma symptoms in reaction to the event. Moreover, those individuals who experience trauma, and who come to change their way of relating to themselves and their outer world, can have an effect on others around them. Studies on children of trauma survivors have found some evidence of the transmission of trauma symptoms from first generation trauma survivor to their children. Understanding the role of parental trauma on the second generation's adaptation can help to improve functioning both on an individual level as well as functioning within the family. This study examined whether trauma symptoms, operationalized as PTSD symptomatology, get transmitted from first generation trauma survivor to second. Modes of transmission (distinguished as hypervigilance/mistrust of world, mode of communication of Holocaust experiences, suffering and pain related to the Holocaust, pervasiveness of the Holocaust experience, and resolution of past losses) were evaluated for their contribution to the increase in trauma symptoms within the second generation.
(...) Regarding modes of transmission, children who perceived parental anguish and responded to it with empathy/guilt leading to an over-identification with parental victim states, experienced a significant amount of trauma symptoms including intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal symptoms. In addition, children who perceived parents to be hypervigilant and socially mistrusting and who reacted to this with their own levels of hypervigilance and mistrust, experienced a significant amount of hyperarousal symptoms. Lastly, children whose parents communicated about their Holocaust experiences in an open manner were found to experience less overall PTSD and fewer symptoms of avoidance than those whose parents were silent about their past experiences. Regarding group differences, children of survivors whose fathers experienced the Holocaust in adulthood, were found to have a greater increase in symptoms of avoidance than those whose fathers were children/adolescents. No significant effects were found for a survivor-mother's age or experience. One important implication of this study is that children of parents who experienced a trauma may be at risk for experiencing trauma symptoms themselves. Therefore, when conducting clinical evaluations/social histories, clinicians must take into account parental trauma history, particularly when PTSD symptoms are present. In addition, understanding the modes by which trauma gets transmitted can help patient and therapist develop new ways of reacting and relating in order to improve functioning both on an individual level as well as functioning within the family."

Symptoms of PTSD (Source: Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma)
The symptoms that characterize Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be divided into three main categories:
Re-experiencing
Avoidance
Hyper-arousal
Not all those exposed to trauma experience the range of symptoms detailed below. We have included an exhaustive list of symptoms, but it is important to keep in mind that a person who has experienced trauma may be suffering even if he displays only a few of the symptoms. We have provided a self test for post-traumatic symptoms, for those interested in testing themselves or someone close to them who has been exposed to a traumatic event.
The following is a list of the main symptoms of PTSD:
Re-experiencing
Invasive memories of the trauma: pictures and thoughts related to the event, which come up again and again and cause great distress
Frequent nightmares connected to the trauma and recurring over many nights.
Flashbacks: a continuous and ongoing feeling that the person has, that the traumatic event has not finished, and that he is caught in the middle of it
Feelings of stress and anxiety when exposed to stimuli that are connected to or symbolize the trauma
Avoidance
Avoiding thoughts, conversations or feelings connected to the trauma
Avoiding places, activities and people that are reminders of the trauma
Loss of interest in activities that used to be considered fun
Feeling foreign and alienated from other people
Difficulty feeling and expressing positive emotion such as happiness or love
Lack of desire to deal with the future or talk about it
Hyper-arousal
Problems sleeping
Short-tempered and fits of anger
Difficulty concentrating and studying
Constant feeling of alertness
Heightened reaction to loud noises and sudden movements
Compulsive dealing with the event
Repeated feelings of guilt connected to the results of the trauma or the behavior of the victim during the event
Non-stop thoughts of the trauma and a narrowing of fields of interest to topics relating only to the trauma
Behaviors that recreate the traumatic event repeatedly
Dissociation
Forgetting significant portions of the event
Feeling disconnected from the self: A feeling that "this isn't really me"

It is a well-known fact that Holocaust survivors who endured the concentration camps suffered agonizing emotional wounds that, for many, have never healed. Less well-known is how this legacy has also seeped into the psyches of many of their children. Bower (1996) studied 80 Jewish adults born to Holocaust survivors and 20 Jewish adults whose parents had not faced Nazi persecution. All subjects were of comparable age and all had reported experiencing some type of trauma during their life. At some point over their lifetime, 29 percent of the offspring of Holocaust survivors had experienced symptoms of depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as opposed to zero percent of the control group. This finding suggests that the child or children of the Holocaust survivor may be at higher risk for psychiatric symptoms including depression, anxiety and PTSD through exposure to their traumatized parents (i.e., they may be vicariously traumatized).
Survivors who develop PTSD in response to Holocaust experiences may pass on vulnerability to the same condition to their children. Yehuda et al. (1998) found that survivors' offspring who were diagnosed with PTSD typically reported Holocaust-related thoughts or images as their primary traumas. In addition to PTSD, children of Holocaust survivors also experience many other symptoms. Holocaust survivors often develop symptoms such as guilt associated with being alive (i.e., "survivor guilt"). Other symptoms include melancholia and identification with the dead. It has been suggested that survivors may believe that they are unable to fulfill the needs of their children and may withdraw from their children (Fogelman, 1998).
Some data indicate that children of Holocaust survivors have difficulties with interpersonal adjustment (Garland, 1993). This may come as little surprise, since many witnessed destruction of interpersonal ties and violence of extreme nature. Such traumatic experiences can lead to difficulty with social adjustment and difficulty trusting others. Garland (1993) has commented that "work has shown that the children of parents who have carried within them, however silently, the experience of a destroyed world have much to contend with growing up… making normal separation and individuation difficult. Children of such survivors have an intense need to act as redeemers for their parents." Similarly, Fogelman (1998) found that children of survivors evidenced problems with communication and identity conflicts.
Mor (1990) found a higher frequency of separation anxiety and guilt in children of survivors. Past studies have focused on survivors of concentration camps and their offspring without regard to those Jews who survived many different circumstances. Studies have revealed that the Holocaust impacted a great deal of the identity development of child survivors. Many of the adults studied tended to view their adult experiences with feelings such as the need to escape reality, hide, or save others.
Garland (1993) found that child survivors who had experienced loss, separation, and death of family members exhibited somatic complaints, difficulties with the expression of aggression, and pronounced anxieties about themselves and their children.The various effects that adults who were child survivors experience can be attributed to many aspects of their traumatic exposure. Children and adults were treated differently in the camps and consequently their emotional reactions were different. Children were likely too traumatized during the war to experience "true" childhood. They did not know what it was like to be a child and be taken care of by their parents. Most of them were taken away from their parents. Also, because the child's identity had been in a state of development, their experiences may have remained buried in their memory (i.e., unconscious). This may have impeded their ability to empathize with others and likely negatively affected their adjustment to their own offspring.Another area in which there have been many interesting findings is with survivors who were hidden during the war. These would include those who actually hid underground, in the woods, or in closed spaces such as attics. Many Jews were also sent to live with Gentile families or in convents or orphanages, posing as Gentiles or actually converting to Catholicism. Others were refugees during the war.

Try to imagine what can happen if second (third or fourth) generation patients of this form of PTSD are not aware of their disorder, if this disorder is (more or less) collective because of the narrow circle they live in, as Jews often do. What if the Holocaust is not the (only) cause of this form of PTSD? What if a (collective?) trauma of a part of the Jewish people was also caused by pogroms, antisemitism, persecution, war, occupation and exile, or the fear of a possibility of persecution etc.? Most Jewish people have an excellent history-awareness and history shows us that these fears are realistic. Thus entire generations can grow up without the ability to give and share emotions in a normal way, if at all.
There are two kinds of aggression: dominance aggression and fear aggression. There are people who believe that Israel's aggression in warfare is caused by dominance. I doubt that. I think it's fear aggression, caused by a long history of living in fear.

Lew Grade (Louis Winogradsky), the Russian-born British television producer and impressario, recalls the circumstances that brought him with his parents, and younger brother Boris (Bernard Delfont) from Odessa to Brick Lane, London, in 1912. "At the age of five and a half I was completely unaware of the political situation in Russia and wasn't even aware of the pogroms or the anti-Jewish attacks happening around the country... If my parents suffered any mental anguish at what was going on - and I'm sure they must have - they never let it show."

A Final Solution with No End?
The Transgenerational Effect of the Holocaust
By Darren J. Sush
Why is it so important to excel in school and work? Why are there always so many guests at the dinner table? Why does Grandma make so much food, and why do we have to finish it all?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.: DSM-IV-TR; APA), describes PTSD as the persistent re-experiencing of a traumatic event, the persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, a general numbing of responsiveness, and persistent symptoms of increased arousal. The symptoms of PTSD may cause disturbances or impairment in social and occupational functioning, as well as other areas of daily living. Such effects, whether diagnosed as full PTSD, or simply problems in mood and adjustment, may have serious impairments not only for the survivors, but also for their children (Barocas & Barocas, 1979).
Following the Holocaust many survivors attempted to reestablish their lives by starting new families and creating new foundations and roots. Unfortunately, for some survivors, separating the painful memories of their past from their present family life was a difficult and emotionally straining task. Many survivors did not want to burden their children with the memories of the past, and instead remained silent in the hopes of protecting their children’s wellbeing (Abrams, 1999; Fossion, et al., 2003).
However, though the stories of the past remained silent, implicit messages were generally still conveyed. The child’s lack of understanding of their parent’s struggle was not simply forgotten, but instead, replaced by childhood fantasies depicting atrocities that were, in many cases, more severe than the actual past experience. Therefore, although the intent by parental survivors was to protect their children, maintaining silence and secrecy ultimately lead to an exacerbation of other troubling areas in family life (Krell, et al., 2004).
For Holocaust survivors, their children were a representation of survival. The second generation reassured survivors that their conflict was ending and their life would continue (Fossion, et al., 2003). The loss of their own security and belongings in the past, led survivors to seek a life for their children filled with the utmost security (van IJzendoorn, et al., 2003). However, parent’s often conveyed an image of imminent daily danger to their children, and implemented a series of restrictive consequences. Without the explicit knowledge of why their parent’s were so overly protective, due to the practice of silence regarding the past, children of Holocaust survivors learned to be hypervigilant and anxious leading to difficulties in separation and individuation (Krell, et al., 2004).Furthermore, children of Holocaust survivors’ worries and anxieties were often met with a lack of interest, compassion, or understanding. Second generation children learned that their problems were trivial in comparison to those of their parents. Parent’s understanding of what should be considered problematic was based on the experience of the Holocaust; therefore, the complaints and issues of their children seemed minute and insignificant. As a result, children learned to consider their own problems as such (Krell, et al., 2004).Additionally, many Holocaust survivors experienced what is known as “sequential traumatization,” which describes the repeated trauma and stress that accumulated before, during, and after the Holocaust (van IJzendoorn, et al., 2003). In order to survive the constant threat to daily living and functioning, many Holocaust survivors were forced to become numb to their own pain and turn away from their emotional responses. The lack of empathy and compassion carried over into their relationships with their spouses and children. While many second generation children noted an understanding that their parents loved them, they perceived an overall lack of compassion and affect in displaying that love, and in sympathy toward their various wants and needs (Krell, et al., 2004). Feelings of helplessness and vulnerability are prominent amongst second generation children. The lack of emotional openness and willingness to connect by parents was mitigated through focus on personal and academic achievement. Extreme importance was placed on the value of education, occupational advancement, and the importance of continuing the family. Children may have felt responsible for their parent’s sadness or deficiency of emotional support, and would try to please their parents by excelling in the areas of life in which their parents placed value. However, despite accomplishment in any or all of these areas, children of Holocaust survivors often felt unfulfilled due to lack of emotional praise and contact. Many children were unable to understand the paradox of wanting to please their parents, while resenting their lack of affective attachment. Feelings of guilt and anger were often the result, lasting through adulthood and carrying over into other relationships and connections (Fossion, et al., 2003).
The normal outlets for complaint and rebellion were not available to children of Holocaust survivors, as they may have been for other children. Parents often avoided arguments or signs of disagreement, perhaps because the emotional tools for such arguments were not available, or because they viewed a child’s argument as rejection or ingratitude (Krell, et al., 2004).Children of Holocaust survivors may not have had alternate sources of care and comfort available to them as means of guidance during emotionally unstable times. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and other family members may not have been accessible for comfort and advise either due to loss during the Holocaust, or differing migration patterns. Photos, documents, and other objects of the family’s past may have been destroyed during the Nazi occupation, resulting in a discontinuity of the historical legacy of the family, and therefore the ability to learn from past examples (Fossion, et al., 2003).The emotional expression not present in many families of Holocaust survivors may also be tied to the organization and understanding of attachments and relationships. Most Holocaust survivors experienced some form of loss during their struggle; for many that loss came in the form of separation or death of a parent or loved one. Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between the experience of loss by a parent and their attachment relationships with their children. The comprehension of attachment relationships, like those between parent and child, becomes disorganized (Sagi, van IJendoorn, Joels, & Scharf, 2002). The lack of resolution of trauma and loss leads to unresolved mourning by the parent, affecting the bond between parent and child (van IJzendoorn, 1995).Survivors who were infants and toddlers during the time of the Holocaust have indicated tremendous difficulty initiating and responding to their intimate relationships. The traumatic loss of a parent, or other significant figures, during childhood is coupled with the inability to express emotions of attachment, such as love, sexuality, friendship, and caring. During the Holocaust, many children lost their parental figures, and thereby lost their image for developing a cohesive identity that had the ability and comprehension to bond with others (Mazor, 2004).It is important to note that infants, young children, and adults were all subject to the effects of the Holocaust. For those survivors who were older at the start of the Holocaust, and had several years of relatively normal family life prior to the terror and stress that followed, a secure and healthy attachment style may have already been created. Therefore, the loss of parental figures to model proper attachment may have had less of an effect on the future attachment style and ability to bond with family members, particularly their own children and spouses (van IJzendoorn, et al., 2003).Yet, the answer still remains unclear as to why it is that while some children of Holocaust survivors experience anxiety and pain within their family life, others are able to transform the horrifying experience of the Holocaust and perhaps the emotional difficulties of their parents into inspiration and determination. Only speculation can begin to presume why some Holocaust survivors and their children are found to have severe emotional difficulties, while others only experience mild distress, and still others are able to function within a normal range (Krell, 1983).One such presumption however, is that some Holocaust survivors did not possess constitutional predispositions toward the development of traumatic stress reactions, helping them to survive the atrocities and difficulties of Nazi occupation. Therefore, the lack of genetic vulnerability toward anxious response exhibited by Holocaust survivors may have been passed down to children of Holocaust survivors allowing them to not have been as sensitive to traumatic events in their own lives, or the reporting of the trauma experienced by their parents (van IJzendoorn, et al., 2003).
Reactions and Conclusions Prior to my research I expected to find explanations spelled out in neon lights, but unfortunately, my inquiry left me with only probable associations and possibilities. While psychological distress can be connected to the Holocaust, a distinct causal link has yet to be determined. However, the experience of unabashedly delving into the past has forever opened my mind to the emotions my grandparents and parents must have absorbed as a result of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, levels of secrecy and silence continue to stagnate and mask many of these issues. Like many other families, my family discussed the Holocaust and my grandparent’s captivity in the concentration camps. Although the stories were told to us, we were always aware that recalling these memories brought great pain to the storyteller. As a result, an unspoken understanding is still kept; the children do not ask too much about what took place, and the grandparents would not give ample detail or tell too much. While this practice reduced stress for all parties involved, it also helped to perpetuate the cycle of mystery, secrecy, and emotional separation across the generations. Fossion et al. (2003) noticed that Holocaust survivors were generally more prone to talk about their past through their grandchildren rather than their own children. Using this as an opportunity to break the progression of distress, the researchers suggest taking advantage of this lapse of secrecy in order to facilitate greater communication among families. While stories of the Holocaust are difficult to discuss for both the listener and the survivor, tales of survival, strength and coping can be much more empowering. By increasing the practice of communication among family members, even through third generation intermediaries, Holocaust survivors and their families may begin to repair the emotional damage that began over sixty years ago. Although much of the literature discussed a lack of empathetic expression and a priority system based on accomplishment, there is evidence that humanistic values were transmitted across generations. In an audience of several hundred second generation members, about two thirds indicated that they had chosen a profession within a helping field (Peskin, 1981). I can see this pattern emerge while looking at my own family, as much of the younger generation has chosen a profession in which they help others. Perhaps my family members were correct when they teased me about being able to fill my psychological practice with members of my own family, and perhaps it is that unrestrained level of communication and openness that has allowed us to continue on with our lives. Although I do not have conclusive answers about my family, I know now that I owe my grandmother another visit, and a long conversation.

Study: Cancer risk over twice as great for Holocaust survivors
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent

The first comprehensive study of the incidence of cancer among Holocaust survivors has shown that Holocaust survivors were found to be 2.4 times more likely to have cancer than their peers who had not been through the Holocaust.
Cancer of the large intestine among male Holocaust survivors was found to be nine times that of men the same age who immigrated to Israel from Europe before World War II. Among women, the rate was 2.25 times higher for Holocaust survivors. The study, carried out at the University of Haifa's School of Public Health and funded by the ICA, was based on National Cancer Registry statistics. Researcher Nami Vine Raviv, under the guidance of Dr. Micha Barchana and Prof. Shai Lin, compared the incidence of cancer among 1.8 million Israelis born in Europe between 1920 and 1945 who came to Israel after the war with 464,000 Israelis who were born between 1920 and 1939 and immigrated to Israel before 1939.
Women Holocaust survivors were 1.5 times more likely to have breast cancer than pre-war immigrants. Five-year cancer survival rates were also found to be lower among Holocaust survivors, by between 5 percent and 13 percent, regardless of sex or age. The researchers believe this may be a result of later detection of the disease because of an unwillingness to complain or to be examined among Holocaust survivors.
The team found that the younger the Holocaust survivor was during the war, the greater their cancer risk. For example, the risk for getting breast cancer later in life was double for women who were younger than 10 during the Holocaust than those above that age. "The exposure to starvation and malnutrition during childhood and adolescence, when the body is in a period of accelerated growth, was found to amplify the risk of developing cancer," Vine Raviv says.
AMCHA, the National Israeli Center for Psychosocial Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation, confirms the research findings. "A day doesn't go by when I don't sign a letter that is somehow connected to a cancer patient," Tel Aviv branch director Hani Oron says. A few months ago Oron sent a German translation of the study to the 11 regional offices in Germany that deal with Holocaust reparations payments, requesting funding for psychological counseling for Holocaust survivors with cancer.
"Holocaust survivors have a different dialogue with death than people who weren't there," Oron says.
"Ironically, it is those who touched death for whom cancer is a terrible threat, and their reaction to it is very hard. They don't call the illness by its name, insisting on calling it 'the disease.' They are very upset and their coping abilities are weakened. Some even refuse treatment," he adds.

Made a life for himself
Ben-Zion Ben-Ari was 13 when World War II came to Transnistria, in the Ukraine. For three years, he evaded the transports to the work camps and death camps. His father was taken in one Aktion. When his mother was captured, he decided to stay with her. They survived the camps and immigrated to Israel after the war.
In Israel, Ben-Ari made a life for himself, putting the horrors of the war behind him until he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 50. "For three years, I waged a daily war against death," Ben-Ari relates. "Suddenly, after all those years, I was told I had a serious illness and I had to fight death once more."
At the Israel Cancer Association (ICA), where he now volunteers, Ben-Ari found the emotional support that helped him to survive a colectomy, chemotherapy and additional surgery four years later, when his cancer was found to have metastasized.
"In some ways cancer was worse than the Holocaust, because in the Holocaust I was part of a group and here I am on my own. In the Holocaust, I was young and strong," Ben-Ari says. The disease triggered nightmares from the period of the war. "For 10 years I dreamed. Everything came from my subconscious - the shouting, the fear," Ben-Ari relates. He took a course in positive thinking and began taking antidepressants.
In the past few years he has had skin cancer. "I am very afraid of the disease, but skin cancer is treatable. If I survived both types of cancer it obviously means I am stronger," Ben-Ari says.

For your honour and conscience
Forward! Against bolshevism
The Waffen-SS calls on you!

Crazy times - Jews in the Waffen-SS
By Jack Vanderwyk
My mother was Jewish and my stepfather came from a family of crypto-Jews. During the War she had to go underground (some of her relatives were already deported to concentration camps), while he joined the SS-Standarte Westland, an infantry regiment of the Wiking division, as a volunteer. They didn't know each other then.
In April 1941 he arrived in the Lehndorfkazerne in Klagenfurt (Austria), where he was trained to handle infantry weapons. On June 22nd 1941 Operation Barbarossa started, and on June 29th 1941 his unit marched on Lemberg (Lvov), a city where many Jews had lived for centuries. The SS-Standarte Westland were part of Heeresgruppe South (C). On August 25th this Army Group occupied Dnyepropetrovsk, Ukrain, and on November 18th 1941 they approached Stalingrad (now Volgograd), after heavy fights with the Soviet Red Army.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad proceeded rapidly, but despite controlling over 90% of the city at times, they were not able to dislodge the last Soviet defenders, who clung tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River as the weather turned rainy and cold.
Between May 7th and July 23rd 1942 the German 6th Army was involved in the German Summer Offensive, but in November 1942 the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, a two-pronged attack on the exposed flanks of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. This operation dramatically turned the tables, as the weakly held German flanks collapsed and the German 6th Army was inside Stalingrad. As the Russian winter set in, the 6th Army weakened rapidly from cold, starvation, and ongoing Soviet attacks. During December 1942, a German attempt to break the encirclement failed, and subsequently all attempts at supply collapsed. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased, and the surrounded 6th Army had been destroyed. Of the 91,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 5,000 ever returned. Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent to all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of disease (particularly typhus), cold, overwork, mistreatment, and malnutrition.
My stepfather returned, but his hands suffered severely from frostbite, and when he was drunk he would sometimes sing Nazi songs and say things like "Die Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg!" (the wheels have to run for the [German] victory).
Meanwhile during the war, my mother was hiding for the Gestapo. She was one of the many Jews who went “underground” as the deportations began, in February 1941. These “submerged Jews” frequently shuttled from one safe house to another. The people who hid them showed compassion and daring, revealing the possibility of resistance to genocide. Ordinary citizens knew the potential costs of hiding Jews. In most cases, this meant death for the entire family. Sharing meager food supplies, especially as the war progressed, added to the strain.
These hidden refugees had no documentation cards, living in a “no-mans-land” ripe for detection and arrest. Families were often split. Hiding places changed weekly, and the monotony of total exile from social interaction took a toll on their mental well-being.
In Holland over 40,000 Jews were concealed by everyday citizens, yet only 15,000 survived.
Five years after the war my mother and my stepfather met each other. She was pregnant (of me) and needed a job and a place to stay. He just had divorced his wife, he had a pub, and he could use all the help he could get.
I don't know when my mother found out about his war past, when she discovered that he was part of the terrible system that made her submerge for nearly five years, but it must have been awful for her. All she knew was, that he came from a respectable Jewish family like her own, of which many died in Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka. And even my stepfather himself didn't know at the time that his side of the family converted to Lutheranism in the 1800s, to officially get rid of their Jewishness. Intermarriage in the late 1800s and early 1900s saw to it that the Nazis weren't able to trace their Jewish roots. I'm sure that my stepfather wasn't the only (crypto-)Jew who fought on the side of the Nazis; how can they ever tell anyone?
My childhood was pretty grim. Both my mother and my stepfather never talked about the war, and my stepfather used to hit me. When I was 34 I told my mother that I could remember him hitting me since I was three years old, and she replied, "Three years? You were three weeks old when he started to hit you when you were crying!"
"Why didn't you leave him?" I asked. "Why didn't you try to stop it?"
"How could I?" she replied. I was devastated.
The only love I ever experienced in my childhood was the love of my biological father's family, who took me in whenever the physical abuse became life threatening.
When I was 6 years old, my stepfather accidentally let a heavy concrete trough drop on his feet. A couple of days later he was up and about again and fed the horses in the field. Then he got tetanus. The ambulance came and the doctor said my stepfather wouldn't make it to the hospital; he would be dead before the next village. I was so happy!
But he made it to the hospital and he survived.
I used to call my mother "memme", affectionately, but I stopped doing that when I was 8 years old. I just couldn't feel any affection toward her any more, let alone toward my stepfather, and I still can't get rid of the feeling that this must have been mutual.
Taking into account what terrible history they both had, a common and yet so conflicting history, there could have been a possibility to forgive them. But although I was able to understand the behaviour of other Holocaust survivors I knew, I wasn't able to forgive my stepfather and especially my mother for theirs. Until recently I had regular nightmares, in which I was a three year old boy and my stepfather was beating me up. That fear is still inside of me, and I really do believe that my mother had opportunities to get me out of that situation, and that she - for whatever reasons - decided not to take those opportunities, or even one of them.
I have always been the only one who knew about their terrible history. Theirs, because she knew about it. How can you live with such a history?
I think that many survivors of the Nazi era at one point in their lives were able to turn off the "button" of their emotions, as a defense mechanism, and some of them were not able to turn it on again after the war.
When my stepfather was in his seventies, he tried to make it up to me, in a rather peculiar way. I had bought an old farm house, and the soil of the land around it needed to be freed from rubble. So without saying anything to me, he came to the land every day, to work on his bare knees and remove the rubble. Sometimes he knocked at the kitchen door to ask my wife for a glass of water. He knew I wouldn't talk to him.
Yet when he had a stroke, I tried to revive him, by performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. At that time he was just another human being to me, not the man that had ruined my childhood, ruined my life. And I also did it for my mother, who obviously still loved him, despite of everything.
"I'll burn all his photographs!" she said, to comfort me, but the only thing I could reply was, "Don't bother."
I, like my mother, have difficulties with sharing my emotions; she because of what happened to her, I, in turn, because of what happened to me. I decided I wouldn't continue this vicious circle, that my children wouldn't have to experience what I experienced in my childhood. So I went into psychotherapy for seven years, and I really think it helped me.

The Memory of Trauma: Hidden Jewish Children and Family Lives in Postwar Holland
By Diane Wolf
The history and memory of hidden children creates a very different legacy of the Holocaust, one that has remained relatively unearthed. It is, in great part, a hidden history and part of a recently created collective memory of Jewish life. In my study, I utilized a sociological lens for the study of hidden children, in relation to their multiple families before, during, and after hiding and in doing so, analyzed their shifting identities and family dynamics. Based on 70 narratives of those hidden in the Netherlands, the sociology of hidden children and their families reveals a trajectory in which the roles of trauma and memory are central. Hiding generally consisted of two possibilities for children in the Netherlands: either they were kept clandestinely in a non-Jewish household, or they were allowed to integrate into the family’s life and circulate, spending their war years “passing” as non-Jews. Elsewhere, in countries such as France, Belgium and Italy, a third possibility existed more broadly–convents, monasteries and other Catholic institutions. Most of those I interviewed spent their war years passing as non-Jews. They underwent massive identity make-overs in their voyage from their natal Jewish family to life-saving Dutch Gentile families in which their names, places of origin, histories and religion were radically revised. Those who were hidden as infants or toddlers were not even cognizant that they were undergoing a transformation. Young children simply adapted to their new names, new parents, new siblings, new relatives, new beds, new friends, new villages, new churches, new practices and new rules.

Jews who directly experienced the Shoah are generally termed “survivors.” Their children constitute what is known as “the second generation,” or children of survivors. It is generally assumed that children of survivors did not experience the Shoah directly and have no direct memory of that experience. Rather, they develop a “post-memory” (Hirsch, 1997) transmitted by parents. Hidden children present an unusual group in that they are clearly 0A copious literature on children of survivors argues that they inherit certain kinds of survivors and for those whose parent(s) returned, they are also children of survivors. They inhabit two distinct status as both first and second generation, as both survivors and children of survivors who experienced the Shoah directly and indirectly which cannot help but to intensify its effects. Since so few children and intact families survived concentration camps, such double positioning is rare among Jewish Holocaust survivors. This means that many are doubly burdened by their own traumatic histories in addition to being the children of parents who also had traumatic histories. My sample is based on the narratives of 70 people who hid as children in the Netherlands. The majority I interviewed still live in Holland and I also interviewed former hidden children in the US and in Israel. I divided my sample into three categories based on post-war family status: (1) two parents returned thereby recreating an intact nuclear family, (2) one parent returned, or (3) no parents returned. In this paper, I focus only on those in the first and it is not necessary to explain In my sample, the average age at hiding was about 7.3 and the median age was 4 years old for both boys and girls in my sample. Two-thirds of all the girls and about half the boys were hidden at age five or younger.

One of the unexpected findings in this study is that the war’s end in 1945 was very problematic for many hidden children, even (and perhaps especially) those whose parents were still alive. As Dutch-born child psychiatrist and former hidden child Robert Krell stated, “liberation was not liberating” (Krell, August 21, 2005) but quite the antithesis. For many if not most of those I interviewed, the end of the war signified the beginning of new and sometimes insurmountable difficulties. Family dynamics tended to be problematic as parents returned and claimed children who had grown accustomed to another family and other parents. Most hidden children had to make another transition into a different setting. Only a very small minority of psychological burdens and problems as a direct result of their parents’ experiences ( Hoffman, 2004 Hass,1990; Danieli, 1985; Newman, 1979; Epstein, 1979; Spiegelman, 1986).

Other hidden children had a relatively smooth transition into post-war family life and those were the orphans who stayed with their non-Jewish hiding family. Thus, contrary to what we might imagine, the survival and return of biological parents usually spelled problems for hidden children. Until recently, former hidden children remained in hiding about their past as Holocaust survivors. There are many reasons for their silences. Once family life was resumed after the war, many parents did not want to hear about their children’s wartime experiences and thought it best ignored. Many hidden children never encountered one parental question about their hiding experiences and orphans had no one to ask them. Others had their stories dismissed by parents who either felt guilty or could not tolerate hearing about their children’s problems (or positive interactions) during the war. Some parents, claiming that their own experiences had been far worse, silenced their children. And some dismissed their children’s attempts to discuss the past by stating that young children do not have memories and therefore cannot truly remember such things. Thus, most parents created a hierarchy of suffering after the war in which children did not count. No one else wanted to know about their war-time experience either. Neither schoolmates nor teachers wanted to hear about their experiences; questions were not asked and the message transmitted was to move on. This is not specific to the Netherlands, however.

Historian Deborah Dwork (1991) points out that in all of Europe after the war, the sensibilities of Jewish survivors were dismissed and ignored; adults and children alike were “left to deal with their difficulties alone.” Dutch Gentile society was not interested in hearing about Jewish suffering since they too felt victimized by the war. Furthermore, they did not want to confront their collaborative and highly passive behaviors that ended up decimating the Dutch Jewish population. Direct and indirect messages then contributed to hidden children’s tendencies to keep their identities and histories hidden and closeted, a lesson they learned well during the war.

CHILDHOOD, FAMILY, AND MEMORY
My focus is always on the relationship between the child and the family, as a way to get some sense of family relationships, at least from one perspective. I view these dynamics as ongoing processes which occur within and are often determined or constrained by the broader structures and ideologies of society and the State whether in war or peacetime. In this research, I asked about the child in his or her pre-war family life, the separation and ejection from family into a strange family and what it meant to adapt to a new family (or families), however, my main focus is to understand what it meant when a parent or parents returned and another separation and ejection from a family occurred, this time going “home” to a strange consisting of biological parents. The family, argues sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel, represents what he terms a “remembrance environment,”–one of many spaces that lie somewhere “between the personal and the universal.” The memories we share with others in these environments, Zerubavel asserts, constitute the terrain of the sociology of memory (1996:284). However “family memory” does not represent the families’ experiences since I did not interview all family members. Clearly, biological parents would have a very different view of these relationships as would foster parents and foster siblings (see Evers Emden). What is attempted here is a reconstruction of family relationships through the eyes of a child as s/he experienced war and progressed through his/her life course. There is no question that this perspective is greatly shaped by the age, gender, birth order of the child, a perspective that may differ dramatically from an adult’s or even an older or younger sibling’s. I make no assumptions of family consensus or cohesion.

Families are more often than not the locus of conflict and tension even if (some might add, especially if) they survived the Shoah intact. Because of my interest in their experiences, many of the questions I asked of former hidden children and much of the information I sought was of an emotional nature. I sought feelings and memories of their feelings rather than facts (e.g., exact dates) since dramatic events such as separations from parents are likely to conjure up those emotions one felt as a child. When Parents Returned This paper will focus specifically on the reunion of parents and hidden children directly after the war. For about one-third of my sample–twenty three hidden children–both parents survived the Shoah, usually in hiding as well or in a concentration camp. These were the children who were and still are considered “lucky” by many of their peers, although their post- war family lives do not reflect such great luck.. Another one-third of my sample had only one parent survive the war and while aspects of the parent-child reunion were similar, there are also dissimilarities in these cases such that they will not be discussed here. Most of those I interviewed were in hiding for two to three years and were hidden as young children, under the age of five. If they were less than five at the war’s end, they do not recall the reunion with their parents. If they were at least five at the war’s end in 1945, they can recount this event when they were confronted with parents they did not recognize or remember; indeed, they have a strong memory of the first post-war encounter which was, for the most part, disastrous. Those who were more than five when they went into hiding did not forget their parents during the hiding experience and the reunion was less traumatic. . Almost half this group went into hiding under the age of three while two-thirds were under the age of five. In terms of descriptive demographic data, this group consists of 14 females and nine males. Furthermore, the number of places in which they hid fits the general pattern I found-- one-quarter were in one home for the duration of hiding, approximately four years on average. Another quarter were in two hiding places while most of the remainder ended up in four to six hiding places. In one case, a newborn baby was taken into hiding when only a few hours old was told that he was in at least fifteen hiding places.

Another former hidden child who also went into hiding as a young infant simply did not know his hiding history. The data strongly suggest that in general, regardless of age at hiding, post-war relationships between daughters and their parents, particularly their mothers, were not close. Indeed, it is striking although perhaps understandable that so many in this group, still envied today by their peers for not having experienced the loss of either parent, describe their relationships with their parents after the Shoah as distant, cold and detached. Interestingly, this relationship holds regardless of the relationship between the hidden child and his/her foster family. Furthermore, it is highly gendered in that the males in this group do not seem to experience the high degree of dissatisfaction in their relationships with their parents compared with the females. That females are brought up to be more relationship-oriented and emotionally aware may explain the difference between male and female respondents. This section will use interviewees’ narratives to illustrate the nature of the reunion between parents and children after the war. It is evident that the younger the child was when s/he went into hiding, the less likely s/he was to recognize his or her parents upon their return. For most of these reunited families, the lack of reconnection that occurred when they first met after the war became a leitmotif in their family dynamics thereafter. However, this lack of connection occurred for older children after the war as well.

Then why focus on these particular interactions? First, there is very little scholarly research on hidden children; the vast majority of literature about Jewish Holocaust survivors focuses on those in camps. Second, the narratives I gathered reveal many processes and outcomes that are different if not the inverse of those of concentration camp survivors. Third, most Holocaust testimonies focus on the war, with little attention to post-war life. Indeed, Steven Spielberg’s Visual History Foundation has gathered 50,000 testimonials from Holocaust survivors in which post-war life receives scant attention. For camp inmates, 1945 signified the end of Hitler’s oppression and the beginning of liberation. However, for most hidden children I interviewed, the war years were liveable and for a small number, they were the best years of their childhood! Unlike camp survivors, for hidden children it was the postwar period that marked the beginning of their traumas—“my war began after the war,” many stated. It is important to look more fully into the experiences of hiding and the postwar lives of those who survived hiding, about whom we have little knowledge and understanding. These histories and memories constitute a rare view onto the postwar lives of children and families after genocide.

In light of the danger of housing a Jewish child under Nazi occupation, most hidden Jewish children had another name, identity, and family background. Children were taught to memorize a new name, a new city of origin, an untrue story about their parents (usually, that they were killed in the bombing of Rotterdam), and a new religious identity. In most cases, foster parents did not talk about the child’s biological parents with them because such knowledge could be deadly. Young children cannot fully be trusted to keep the truth hidden and, therefore, it was safest to encourage them to forget rather than to remember their parents. Some parents knew where their children were hidden but others did not. Those who did not know had to rely on word-of-mouth, putting advertisements in the newspaper, and searching village-to-village, door-to-door. It is clear from some accounts that a small number of foster parents did not want to give up their hidden child and therefore, did not register the child or respond to any advertisements. In at least one case, it was a neighbor who helped connect parents to their child since the foster family had not responded to an advertisement in the newspaper that they had clearly seen. The fact that public transportation was impeded and rubber was not even available to make bicycle wheels did not stop parents from searching for their children. What they found, however, diverged radically from their expectations.

“I KICKED HIM IN THE SHINS”
Sent into hiding as a six month old baby, Maarten clearly did not recognize his parents when they came to pick him up at age two and one-half even though his mother had taken the risk of visiting him toward the end of the war. He explains that there were two versions of his post-war reunion with his parents, his mother’s story and his father’s. His mother was not present at this reunion but used to tell him, you recognized your father and it was as if you knew who your biological father was. And you immediately went home with him. However, Maarten believes the story his father recounted – He wanted to kiss me and I kicked him in his shins. And he came in and stayed for a few hours and then came back the next day for a few hours and so on. And after a week, he stayed for a night, and it took four or five weeks to bring me home again. Indeed, in several cases, parents and foster parents cooperatively and collectively worked out a transition period for children so that they could slowly get accustomed to their biological parents once again.
Also born in 1939, Ria was reunited with her parents at age six. Her parents had put an advertisement in the newspaper to find their three children. They found their two other daughters but did not know where Ria lived. It is still unclear whether her foster parents did not answer the advertisement because they were trying to keep her or because they did not see it. Since there was only one local paper, the latter is fairly unlikely. She explained how her parents found her: They were walking around and they saw a little dress on the laundry line. So they went to that house and I was in the garden. My foster parents were very hospitable so they put my parents in the beautiful room. My foster mother went to get me and she said, ‘Come, come, your parents are here.’ I always used to say ‘mijn eigen papa en mama.’ [my real parents]. And [lowers voice], I didn’t recognize them. That was terrible, terrible. They stayed the whole day and I didn’t eat the whole day. It’s a sad story. I held on to my foster mother the whole day. And I said to her, ‘I don’t go with them. I won’t go with them–he [foster brother] can go with them, I won’t!’ I was afraid to go with them. They went back to their room and I was glad they were gone. After a short time, it was Easter. They came again and I was baptized with my mother in their church. Her parents converted to Catholicism out of gratitude to those who hid them. Ria was baptized Maria, Mary, the name she now uses.

Having a mother in Indonesia was part of Elly’s alibi for living with her hiding family yet it’s clear that the line between fantasy and reality is very thin in the mind of a young child. Six years old at the war’s end, Elly locked herself in a room when her mother came. She referred to her mother as “mijn Tante-Moeder” (my aunt-mother) and was completely confused– I said Tante to my mother and Moeder to my aunt [foster mother] and my ‘real mother’ lives in Indonesia! When discussing this particular time in her life, Elly stated succinctly and directly about her mother: I didn’t like her at all. And that compares starkly with her feelings of safety with her foster mother who held her on her lap, rocked her and sang to her.

Seven year old Wiesje (nee Lea) saw her parents approach. I was standing in front of the window and looking outside and seeing Germans with their hands held over their heads. And then I saw a couple, a man and a woman, on bicycles....with wooden wheels like the Dutch had after the war, because there were no normal tires. And I looked at them because there was nothing else to look at and no one was supposed to be outside and how could they be cycling? That was very dangerous and it was also forbidden. And I looked at them, and looked at them, and looked at them, and they looked at me. And the woman fell off her bicycle. And then I knew that horrible things were going to happen, dramatic things. And I hated drama. And I hated tears and screams and cries. And I ran away to the only place where I could lock a door and it was the lavatory, and locked the door. And very soon, people knocked on the door telling me I had to come out and I didn’t want to and I said that I didn’t want to [laughs]. And in the end, I gave in and came out in the corridor. And the woman screamed and she fell on her knees next to me as one does with little children, and she put her hands on my head and said something which I remember. She said, ‘Yivarech Elohim ke Rivka, Lea ve Sarah.’ [Hebrew blessing of daughters ] And I didn’t say anything. And I looked at the man, who was crying. [pause]. I didn’t like men crying [laughs]....and I looked at him again and said, ‘Daddy’ [long silence]. And he lifted me up as he always used to do. That was my Daddy [soft, shaken voice] and my mother.

Lore was five when she went into two years of hiding. When her parents returned, she was very attached to her foster family. When her foster mother told her “the wonderful news” that her parents were coming for her, Lore’s reaction was: ‘I don’t want to go!’ I had no interest in leaving them. I had made friends, I had a family, I had a school, I had everything I wanted, what did I want those people for? They left me! I didn’t want to go back with them. And when I think, if I try to reverse the situation [teary], I mean just the horror of it, can you imagine, it’s probably all they lived for. They came back and found out that I didn’t want to go with them.
DW: Did you recognize them?
I don’t know.
DW: Did you hug or kiss them? Hug them? Kiss them?
I wouldn’t even leave Cornelia’s skirt! They stayed for about a week till we got acclimated to each other again but I really didn’t trust them. I thought they would leave me again. I just didn’t trust them because they never told me where they were going, whether I was going to see them again, they never explained anything to me.....I think that the reunion really determined my relationship for a long, long time after. You just don’t know how to act with somebody who doesn’t come running into your arms after two years. Then it gets worse and worse and then you stop doing it [showing affection] because it’s so strange. You know if I had gone running into their arms, it would have been such a different kind of meeting.
Lore’s narrative reflects two very different points of view–the seven year old child who is repelled by strangers and then the adult who is also a mother and can empathize with her parents’ pain. It also demonstrates how the danger of the Occupation and war coupled with traditional views of childhood colluded, leading most parents to saying nothing or very little to their child before separating and going into hiding.

This pattern was repeated in many Jewish families. Henny was taken in by a family when she was 5 ½. She explained, slowly your memory gets lost, somewhere on the road. You don’t remember your parents afterwards, you don’t remember your brother, the life which was. And you start something new. One day, after the war ended, her foster mother had gone out shopping and left her at home. She was eight years old at the time. Somebody rang the door. So I went over; in those days, you still opened doors. So there was a woman standing there and she asked me, ‘Is your mother at home?’ I said, ‘No, my mother has gone out shopping.’ ‘Will she be home soon?’ she asked. I said, ‘Yes, probably.’ She said, ‘Can I come in?’ and I said, “yes, of course, come in.” That was my mother, my real mother! She just stood there and she heard me saying that my mother had gone shopping. She didn’t say anything, she just walked in. She walked in and sat down and then my step- mother came back. I went off to play again. But one of the questions she asked me at a certain stage was, ‘Do you remember that awhile ago you used to live in a different place and there was a shop and there was chocolate in the shop? And you loved to eat peanuts?’ I said, ‘Yes, I remember.’ She said, Do you remember you had a little coat in Turkish blue...?’ I said, ‘Yes, I remember. ‘ And you used to go to kindergarten?’ I said, ‘Yes, I remember.’ ‘Do you remember you had a little brother?’ I said, ‘Uh-uh’ [no]. ‘And your father, you remember?’ ‘No.’ I didn’t remembr.

As the ages of hidden children increase in my sample, so does their recognition of their parents after the war. In the film “Secret Lives: Hidden Children and their Rescuers in Nazi Europe,” an elderly Polish born Jewish mother with her middle aged daughter by her side describes her feelings when she gave away her baby girl in the hopes of saving her. The daughter described her parents’ return from camp. Her father had been in the hospital for awhile after having been in a concentration camp but at least “he looked human” implying that her mother did not. Her mother had no hair and looked “terrible.” Of course the daughter did not recognize her mother. The daughter was covered with lice and “she was picking the lice off me, touching me. I said, ‘don’t touch me! I didn’t believe she was my mother.” The mother continues, “She was in a very Christian family and said, ‘Don’t touch me with your Jewish hands!” The mother reiterates how she didn’t blamer her daughter for such feelings but was clearly grateful that a family saved her. As this memory was articulated, it was clear that it stirred up a painful memory for the daughter but we don’t really know what she is thinking. “But now she loves me,“ laughed the mother. The daughter also smiled, tears in her eyes, but it is difficult to know exactly what feelings were behind her tears.

POST-WAR FAMILY LIFE: CREATING A HOME
After parent-child reunions and transitions that lasted up to a few months, almost all hidden children in this category returned to their parents and to a new home in or shortly after 1945. What ensued afterwards was a complex multi-frontal attempt to regain and remake a home, a livelihood, and a family. The first issue at hand was to find a place to live and create a home. Most families found that others were living in their apartments and that their furnishings and possessions were gone. Some parents had asked friends and neighbors to safeguard some of their possessions which otherwise would have been confiscated by the Nazis. After the war, it was not necessarily automatic that these Jewish families received back the goods they entrusted to their gentile Dutch friends. Most parents were completely occupied with the basics of living and surviving, from finding a decent place to live and furniture, in addition to an income. The state made any claims difficult for surviving Jews. In reconstituting their family lives, parents were also anxious to find out who from their families survived the war. It was a rare family that was not heavily affected by losses ......”people weren’t there anymore. It was like being in a horrible dream all the time. ....everyone was always crying and screaming, just like before the war. So in my eyes, nothing had changed.”

Immersed in their own pain, parents were unable to deal with their children’s pain. Thus, hidden children had a double burden, mourning their losses as well as living with grieving parents who transmitted their own pain. The majority of those with an intact family after the war described poor and distant relations between themselves and their parents, irregardless of their age at hiding and the strength of their connection to their foster families. In terms of family dynamics, the narratives point to highly gendered differences. In all cases but one, the fourteen women in this category report that they did not reconnect with their mothers after the war although several of them felt close to their fathers. The nine men in this category follow a different pattern in that parent- child relations were less focal or problematic for them and perhaps more mixed. About four men seem to have reconnected with their parents although two of them had some difficulties in the beginning. What clearly distinguishes the men from the women in this category, however, is that parent-child relations are more prominent in women’s narratives than in the men’s. In several men’s narratives, I was unable to solicit a sense of their post-war relationships with their parents because they did not our could not elaborate on emotional issues in general. Thus it is difficult to assess the nature of their relationship with their parents (and with others). In order to fully understand how the separation during the war affected parent-child relations, we would need to compare the nature of those dynamics before and after the war. In other words, perhaps some parents were not warm toward their children before the war and this simply continued later; in other cases, perhaps the wartime experience and the decimation that it incurred catalyzed a change in adults’ ability to parent their children.

A few older hidden children were able to conjure up memories which are useful to consider. Two women recalled their closeness to their mothers and families before the war; both these women had very different post-war family experiences. Another woman reported a warm large connected family before the war and seems to have had a good relationship with her parents after the war. Finally, one interviewee recalled her pre-war family life by stating that their maid was warm and nice, but that her mother was cold. She and her sister, both of whom are in this study, continued to experience this coldness from their mother after the war. There are not a sufficient number of comparative cases that would allow a more general statement, but these few responses indicate that both continuity and change were evident. Finally, it is essential to remember that these narratives represent the child’s view as filtered through adult lenses. Their parents would likely tell a very different story about themselves and about their children.

Many children were very difficult after they left hiding and returned to their parents. They were angry at their parents for abandoning them, they did not trust their parents, some experienced loss of their foster family and were angry at their parents for taking them away. Many acted out after years of adjusting to strange environments and trying to please others. Dutch psychologist Bloeme Evers-Emden (Evers-Emden and Flim, 1995:128) points out that many hidden children left their sweet characters behind in their foster families and became difficult and rebellious once they returned to their parents. These reactions could be manifest in a number of different ways–aggression, psychosomatic reactions, depression, and the like. Furthermore, as children of survivors, former hidden children were likely affected by their parents’ problems as well. As Evers-Emden ( Evers-Emden and Flim, 1995) points out, these adults had suffered loss but were never able to express their anger about the impossible situation which was forced upon them. They could not easily express their sorrow toward their friends and family and they did not have the opportunity to grieve over dear ones. Those returned from camps had to go through unimaginable stress and did not receive a warm welcome in Holland after the war. ...

Parents were traumatized and very angry at what had been done to them. They were also jealous of foster parents who had their child for years and had strong connections with them (1995: 16, 110; my translation). Within that context, it seems likely that a fair amount of emotional repression was necessary in order to carry on from day-to-day. Depending upon the kinds of losses and the level of emotional repression, it is very possible that this constraint spilled over into family relationships and created a rift between parents and children. In addition, many parents returned from the war suffering from malnutrition, poor health, or from physical wounds inflicted in concentration camps. Two of the women’s mothers were sedated during hiding because they were so agitated and distraught about the safety of their children. They were given either tranquilizers or sleeping pills to which they became addicted. One of the daughters realized that as a result, her mother began to distance herself emotionally, in order to survive. “There was no way back after that.” Five hidden children were very attached to their foster family and did not reconnect with their parents after the war. Conversely, four who reported being able to reconnect with at least one parent after the war were not attached to their foster families. This might begin to suggest some kind of inverse relationship between the child’s connection to his/her biological or foster family, however, the data also demonstrate that the most common category for this group of hidden children were the six people who neither connected with their biological parents after the war nor with their foster family during the war.

There are also five males whose attachments to either family are difficult to categorize. Although he has some memories of his hiding time, his parents never asked him about it, assuming that a small child cannot remember such things. At the end of the interview when I asked him if we had missed anything relevant about how hiding affected him, he began to reflect more critically on his relationship with his parents. What we haven’t discussed in fact is the only thing that is of importance to me with regard to the hiding period and that is that you will never reach a normal attitude toward your parents, not a normal relationship with your parents. I wouldn’t say that they are strangers to me, of course not. But when I observe the relationship between my parents and my younger brothers and sister, it is different. When I see the relationship between my children and me, it is different than the relationship that I have with my parents. It is more emotionally bound.

CONCLUSIONS: “I HAD FOUR PARENTS”
Although children have memories, they are often disjointed and fragmented before the age of five. In the case of young Jewish children hiding in Nazi Europe, it was essential that they lose as much memory of their previous lives as possible so as to stay safe. In other words, losing memories of their parents, their family, their Jewishness and all else was crucial to saving their lives. In many cases, they took on a new identity, family and religion. When surviving parents returned to reclaim their children, those who hid before the age of five no longer recognized them and, in fact, attempted to run away from them. For many hidden children, the world as they knew it fell apart as they realized the people they believed were their parents were not their parents. The trauma of losing yet another family, this time their hiding family, and being forced to live with strangers, this time their biological parents, caused a major rupture in reconstructing meaningful family ties. This paper has delved into the immediate post-war family lives of those hidden children considered to be the lucky ones. What becomes clear from these narratives is that family life was good or neutral for the males, and tended to range from difficult and problematic to disastrous for the females. Although I expected to find more problems in parent-child relations among hidden children who had been strongly connected to their foster parents, that relationship did not hold. That is not to say, however, that the relationship with foster families was irrelevant. It is very likely that such a bond may have intensified the distance between parents and their children, upsetting parents and pulling children further away from them. On the positive side, it gave some children, usually girls, a broader choice of parent figures in a context where many of their aunts and uncles were killed. It also gave them one setting in which they experienced unconditional love. In light of differences in gender socialization, it is not surprising that females would put more emphasis on inter-personal dynamics and on family relations compared with males who are encouraged to be independent. Additionally, since there is not much elaboration on parent-child relations after the war among the men, it is possible that such relationships were complicated but either it was not a major focus in their lives, or it was difficult to admit to such problems. Conventional gender dynamics, that women feel more at ease revealing problems may well be at play here in addition to a traditional focus on family. Nevertheless, if all interviewees are taken at face value, it is clear that the women in this category were more likely to experience both the closeness of ties with foster parents and the rejection and distance from their biological parents. Despite parents’ assumptions that children cannot remember or their hope that their children would forget the war, the narratives have illustrated the tremendous range of feelings and reactions children had to the war and its aftermath. Many of these children clearly had the desire and need to discuss and process their wartime experience but found that their parents did not want to or could not bear to hear about it. This absence of discussion likely broadened the gap that many felt between them after the war. Parents’ denial of their children’s war histories was not necessarily as simple-minded as it sounds. While some clearly dismissed children’s memories as implausible, it’s also likely that parents felt tremendous guilt about abandoning their children to strangers. In her extensive research, Bloeme Evers-Emden (1995) has found that hidden children’s relationships with their parents suffered irreparable damage, a finding that is partially corroborated here, with a gendered twist. Although these children and young people were fortunate compared with their peers whose parents had been murdered, most of them did not feel fortunate–they felt unhappy if not miserable. Family life did not provide the kind of haven they needed and wanted. At the same time, it seems likely that their parents may have felt similarly in light of the tremendous burdens they confronted. The narratives of former hidden children challenge notions of the warmth, comfort and closeness of Jewish families and demonstrate some of the chaos, dysfunction and human fallibility that inevitably occurs after war and genocide.

PTSD and the Palestinians
More than 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating impact on Palestinians in Gaza. Air strikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and other acts of violence have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza's most vulnerable inhabitants. The most recent studies indicate that the vast majority of Gaza's children exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Dr. Kanter described studies that revealed 62 percent of Gaza's inhabitants reported having a family member injured or killed, 67 percent saw injured or dead strangers and 83 percent had witnessed shootings. According to Dr. Evan Kanter, a UW School of Medicine professor and the current president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, in a study of high school-aged children from southern refugee camps in Rafah and Khan Younis, 69 percent of the children showed symptoms of PTSD, 40 percent showed signs of moderate or severe depression, and a staggering 95 percent exhibited severe anxiety. Meanwhile, 75 percent showed limited or no ability to cope with their trauma. All of this was before the Gaza Massacre, euphemistically called "Operation Cast Lead" by the Israelis.
Today some of the most cogent voices about PTSD and the Holocaust are coming from the United States. In Rabbi Yonassan Gershom's article "Breaking the Cycle of Abuse" in the February 1992 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, he writes "On a conscious level the Israelis are not purposely punishing the Palestinians for the Holocaust... But it is also true that people who have been abused will, when they come to power, abuse others because they do not have healthy models for exercising power. Abuse is passed down from generation to generation... unless there is some kind of therapy to teach new ways of coping with frustration and anger."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." All efforts at finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, I have concluded, will be more fruitful when the parties come to see peacemaking as a healing process. It is as necessary to traumatized peoples and nations as it is to individuals subjected to fear, rage or pain "outside the range of normal human experience".