Sites of Terror and the Role of Memory in Shaping Identity Among First Generation Descendants of the Holocaust

This research explores the ways in which the transmission of memory at Nazi sites of terror influences the construction of Holocaust descendant identity. Based on a qualitative study of 50 children of Holocaust survivors who visited Nazi sites of terror in Eastern and Western Europe, the study examines the interactive nature of Holocaust memorialization and the impact of site-specific memory on Holocaust identification among children of survivors. The findings of the study reveal that, as interactive frames of social remembrance, sites of terror serve as objects of memory in which Holocaust narratives are recalled and re-experienced through an emotional engagement with the traumas of the past. The interaction at Holocaust sites thus strengthens descendant identity formation through the arousal of anxiety and fear, the evocation of feelings of sorrow and loss, and the deepening of empathic ties between children and their survivor parents. As a study of the social inheritance of traumatic memory, the research offers new insights on the relationship between memorial culture and the role of memory in shaping survivor identities     

A teacher and his students: child Holocaust testimonies from early postwar Polish Bytom

ABSTRACT

The document presented here was created in 1945 in Bytom, Poland. It contains testimonies by Holocaust survivor children collected and put down in a notebook by their survivor teacher, Shlomo Tsam, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. The testimonies shed light on Jewish children's experience in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust, describing oppression, flight, and survival in the words of the weakest segment of Jewish communities – children. The testimonies provide raw data on the encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the territories in which the “Final Solution” was carried out. It is thus an important source contributing to the burgeoning research on the involvement of local populations in the murder of the Jews, on one hand, and in saving Jews, on the other. The creation of this document, one of several collections of Jewish survivor children's testimonies produced in the immediate postwar years, is also indicative of post-Holocaust Jewish sensibilities and concerns regarding surviving children.     

“As Far as They Knew I Came from France”: Stigma,Passing, and Not Speaking about the Holocaust

Today we recognize that storytelling plays an important role in helping survivors of traumatic episodes such as sexual abuse, military combat, or genocide refashion a sense of self and “work through” their traumatic experiences. But before the Holocaust was named and widely acknowledged and the diagnosis of post‐traumatic stress had emerged, survivors of Hitler's genocidal policies struggled to tell their stories in a world that did not particularly wish to hear them. While most accounts of Holocaust survivors’ postwar experiences focus on themes of redemption, adjustment, and integration, my analysis of interviews with Holocaust survivors suggests during their first two decades living in the United States they were often silenced by individuals they encountered. I use Goffman's analysis of stigma to document how and why this silencing occurred, and with what consequences, providing an account of the interactions survivors had with family members, neighbors and acquaintances, and the strategies of identity management that survivors devised.     

The “ethical loneliness” of male sexual violence survivors in Northern Uganda: gendered reflections on silencing

In this article, I explore the gendered silencing of conflict-related sexual violence against men and of male survivors’ lived realities in Northern Uganda using the frame of masculinities. Utilizing Stauffer’s conceptual framework of “ethical loneliness,” I elucidate how male survivors’ experiences of sexual violence are characterized by various layers of externally imposed silences by different actors and institutions often over decades. I demonstrate that the harms experienced by survivors in Northern Uganda are characterized by silence, isolation and abandonment, “compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard” and constituted through multiple rounds of neglect. Exemplified through the narrative of a male survivor, I argue that in particular, the externally imposed silencing by institutions designed to listen entrenches further harms. I unpack how these layered silences are gendered and conditioned by socially constructed incompatibilities between masculinities and vulnerabilities, which disallow men to openly speak about their sexual violations and to seek services and support. Working with the concept of “ethical loneliness,” I propose a novel theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of externally imposed and gender-specific silencing with wider utility beyond male sexual violence, applicable to survivors of political and wartime gendered violence more broadly.     

Secondary traumatic stress, psychological distress, sharing of traumatic reminiscences, and marital quality among spouses of Holocaust child survivors

In this study, we examined the issue of secondary traumatic stress (STS) among spouses of Holocaust survivors who were children during the World War II. STS is defined as comprising the same components as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), except that the person evidencing the symptoms has not actually been exposed to the traumatic event(s), but has developed them as a result of caring for someone with PTSD. Participants were 90 couples who completed self-report questionnaires regarding posttraumatic symptoms, psychological distress, and marital quality. The results showed that about one-third of the spouses suffered from some degree of STS symptoms. Secondary traumatic stress symptoms and psychological distress among spouses were significantly related to hostility, anger, paranoia, and interpersonal sensitivity in the survivor, but unrelated to whether the survivor had shared his/her reminiscences with the spouse. Female spouses were found to suffer more distress than male spouses, especially when their partner suffered high levels of PTSD. The results suggest that STS is, to a large degree, related to the demands of living with a symptomatic survivor, possibly more than to the empathic element thought to be central to this syndrome.     

Silence Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their Families*

Stories of family therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their families are presented. They came with symptoms or complaints that seemed unusual and at times bizarre. Although they had seen other members of the helping professions, the Holocaust had never been mentioned. Only when it was explored did their problems become comprehensible and meaningful, providing the context for alleviating or resolving their complaints. The positive aspects of survivors' silence are explored. Silence is often experienced as strength, courage, and a testimonial to those who perished. The amazing resilience of the survivors, the strength and vitality that made it possible for them to overcome their pasts and build new lives in a new country, are highlighted.     

“Every Jew is a Zionist,and every Zionist is a spy!” The story of Jewish social assistance networks in Communist Czechoslovakia

This article explores some of the major operations of the Czechoslovak secret police (State Security Forces, StB) against individuals involved in organising Jewish social assistance networks during the 1950s, as documented by fragments of case files preserved in the Security Services Archive in Prague. While there is much focus on victims of the Prague show trial of the so-called “Conspiracy Centre,” all of whom were members of the top echelons of the Communist Party, the individuals who tried to revive Jewish life and secure the well-being of the needy in a country swept by anti-Jewish sentiment raked up by that trial remain largely unknown. In this work, we learn who these people were and what they did, and how the Communist regime punished them for their involvement. As an original contribution, the article details the search for safe methods of delivering humanitarian aid to Czechoslovak Holocaust survivors after the expulsion of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1950, from the initial attempts to use Israeli channels to the gradual legalisation of JDC aid under Swiss cover organisations.     

Holding on to history and each other: The unexpected LGBTQ legacy of a Czech Holocaust survivor and a Torah scroll from her hometown

Abstract

A Czech Holocaust survivor rescued by a Kindertransport in 1939; a long-lost Torah scroll, rediscovered in 1964, from a Jewish community wiped out in World War II; a German American lesbian who converted to Judaism in 2001. Three disparate stories, unfolding decades apart, converge in one memorable encounter, a Kristallnacht commemoration in Los Angeles organized by Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), the world’s first LGBTQ synagogue, which leads to an enduring friendship and fresh insight into contemporary queer Jewish life. In this personal essay, longtime BCC member Sylvia Sukop interweaves history and autobiography to explore the beauty and power of ritual, the resonance of the “Choose life” passage in Deuteronomy that her congregation reads from its rescued Czech scroll every Yom Kippur, and the many forms that good deeds and survival can take. Progressive faith communities, the author suggests, and the traditions in which they are rooted make space to witness and affirm the fullness of one another’s humanity, bridging differences and fostering unexpected kinship in a brutally divisive world.     

Single Mothers “Do” Family

This paper explores how single mothers both incorporate others into family life (e.g., when they ask others to care for their children) and simultaneously “do families” in a manner that holds out a vision of a “traditional” family structure. Drawing on research with White, rural single mothers, the author explores the manner in which these women both endorse their children’s attachment to other caregivers and maintain boundaries around issues of discipline and attachment vis‐à‐vis these others. The author demonstrates that single mothers are willing to share this protected realm of family life with a new man (a fiancé or cohabiting boyfriend) as they pursue the goal of what has been called the “Standard North American Family.”     

Normal stress and coping

Many Black families have chosen alternative lifestyles to accommodate the realities in their lives. The diversity in their lifestyles has often been viewed as “deviance” or “pathological” by White-oriented social science professionals. Black families, however, encounter the pressures any American family may face, and in addition they live under the continuous and varying stress of racially motivated oppression and inequalities that affect many aspects of their lives. The alternative lifestyles many Black American families have developed help to illuminate how Black families cope with the dual stresses of race and life events. This article describes the impact of stress in the lives of two of the variant alternative family forms found in Black families—a single parent family and an extended family. The two families are part of a comprehensive longitudinal study of Black families and their children, the Toddler and Infant Experiences Study (TIES). In addition to documentation of family stress, the data are examined within a conceptual framework that recognizes the dual stress factors of race and life events.     

News and Comment

Holocaust education in the United States began as a grassroots movement during the 1970s. Today, more than 30 states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust; however, far less attention is given in schools to other 20th-century instances of genocide. Totten has suggested that by neglecting “other” genocides (e.g., Darfur, Rwanda, and Cambodia), these events may not be perceived as significant (when compared to the Holocaust), and moreover, students may fail to realize that genocide has occurred multiple times since 1945 and thus no longer a threat today. Given the implications surrounding Totten’s assertion and the global nature of genocide and its reach, we aim to provide social studies teachers and teacher educators with a series of accessible suggestions for incorporating “other” genocides into their practice—suggestions that are aligned and situated within Hanvey’s seminal conceptual frame for global education.     

Reli(e)ving the Past: Emotion Work in the Holocaust's Second Generation

Although most studies of the Second Generation typically account for their social psychological orientations by relying on psychiatric and psychological models, I propose an alternative “listening” to this cohort. I analyze in‐depth interviews by adopting Hochschild's insights on emotion work as a sensitizing framework and suggest that (1) four interrelated types of “deep acting” they continuously feel compelled to perform can account for the psychological “symptoms” commonly attributed to them and (2) these types of deep acting constitute adjustments and reactions to problematic emotional dynamics characterizing their survivor families. I conclude with a discussion of the reciprocal effects of this emotion work.     

The Impact of Historical Trauma and Mistrust on the Recruitment of Resource Families of Color

ABSTRACT

The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP) require states to diligently recruit “potential foster and adoptive families that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children in the state for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed” (42 U.S.C. §622b(3)(9)). Nationally, 53% of the children in foster care and 55% of the children waiting to be adopted are children of color (Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, 2014). Recruitment of resource families of color has historically presented challenges. This article critically examines the diligent recruitment efforts of an urban county targeting Black/African American, Latino, and Native American communities through a critical race theory lens. Although there was an overall increase in resource families, the racial and ethnic representation of resource families to children in care within the county improved for Latinos yet declined for Black/African Americans and Native Americans. Theoretically, these results indicate that the historical mistrust of communities of color toward the child welfare system is a barrier to successful recruitment of resource families from these communities.     

The Father as an Idea: A Challenge to Kinship Boundaries by Single Mothers

In separating parenthood from partnership, women have created new family forms in which men may be involved but not as traditional fathers. Through in‐depth interviews with single middle‐class women, I compare families created with anonymous donors to those created with known donors. In the former cases, mothers craft imagined fathers as their children become “looking glasses” into the men they will probably never meet. These children must rely on the mothers’ imagination to create a sense of the fathers’ view of them. While known donors are not “dads” either, the mothers help these children imagine positive fathers, often through more concrete, personal knowledge, and these fathers often know the children from a distance. In an interesting manner, although children may be created without men as physically present “dads,” women contextualize the donors that allowed them to become mothers through acknowledging the social ways that blood kinship creates families. They ultimately reaffirm certain kinds of kinship rather than challenge them.     

Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums

The article examines the way three contemporary Hungarian museums–the House of Terror Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center–represent the history of the Holocaust and the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Reflecting different political agendas, each of the three museums offers a different interpretation of how the Holocaust fits into the larger narrative of Hungary's 20th century history. The article argues that post-communist public memory has been constructed through debates about these histories. By analyzing the three museums' displays, narratives and the debates surrounding them, the article argues that Hungarian public discourse has yet to come to terms with the meaning and place of “Jewishness” (and the way it has informed “Hungarianness”) in modern Hungarian history. Despite the centrality of Jews and Jewish-non-Jewish relations to the museums' narratives, none are able to offer a clear definition of what “Jewishness” means and how it functioned at different times throughout the 20th century.     

Narratives of suffering among older Jewish women

This paper analyzes what 30 elderly Jewish women said about suffering. Their views must be understood in the larger context of Jewish culture in America. A fundamental question here concerns the degree to which the Holocaust, the ultimate in suffering for Jews, is used as a personal comparison for the suffering of these women. Relatively few mentioned the Holocaust in their personal narrative of suffering. Nevertheless, the Holocaust was always a silent presence in these narratives. Our data analysis found seven themes in the in the interview material about suffering. These are: (1) a general lack of direct reference to the Holocaust as the exemplar of personal suffering; (2) a focus on the need to survive; (3) the pervasiveness of disease-related pain and discomfort; (4); miserable life experiences; (5) reviewing life and encountering the end of life; (6) discrimination; and (7) suffering as a cultural construct.Most people experience suffering at some point in their lives. Some may outlive their suffering, but most never forget it. While suffering at any one time may be intense, some people may grow away from this experience, particularly when their minds are set on other things. Narratives of suffering can become important personal testimonies and, for Jews, collective testimony. Accessing narratives of suffering through interviewing or conversation brings such experiences to the surface, painful as they might be. Yet each retelling of such a story represents a victory of sorts, as the teller says, “I am still here.”In this paper we examine narratives of suffering among 30 elderly American Jewish women age 80 and above. Nearly all were born in the United States, but were the first or second generation to be born here. While the emphasis on Americanism and becoming an American was quite strong among these immigrant generations and their children, a symbolic connection to the old country was still maintained through cultural praxis.     

The Longest Shadow A Clinical Commentary On Moshe Lang's Silence: Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their Families

This commentary addresses one of the issues raised by Moshe Lang's Silence: Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their Families, namely the paucity of a psychotherapy literature about holocaust survivors and their families. Possible reasons for this phenomenon are discussed, with an emphasis on the implications for family therapy.     

The Lies That Bind: Heteronormative Constructions of “Family” in Social Work Discourse

The social work profession has an enduring history of commitment to American families; in fact, it has often led the way in embracing alternative family arrangements. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) families are gaining more political visibility and lobbying for rights and protections from which they were previously excluded. Therefore, this study is an analysis of social work's contemporary, defining representations of LGBTQ families. Twelve LGBTQ “family” research studies were culled from the database Social Work Abstracts, and subjected to queer discourse analysis in order to illuminate how these alternative family forms are being constructed within the discipline. This analysis details the multiple ways in which heterosexual norms are privileged throughout the research studies. For example, the heterosexual family is often constructed as an unchallenged index for psychological health, appropriate partnering, and child rearing practices, social acceptability, and general normative behavior. LGBTQ relationships often earn their “family” designations by their ability to approximate these legible, heteronormative “family” characteristics. As such, this queer discourse analysis indicates that LGBTQ families are ultimately invited to join, but not to change, the traditional terms of “family,” thus making the social work research less of an exploration of alternative family forms and more of an endorsement of same-sex, nuclear families.     

21st Century American Military Families: A Review in the Context of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

This article has three interrelated objectives designed to highlight military family studies in the context of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Often referred to collectively as “the war on terror,” Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom represent the most comprehensive wars fought with an all‐volunteer force since the nation's independence. I review the literature on American military families with an emphasis on the challenges facing military families during these operations. First I provide coverage of issues specific to military marriages and then address the research on children of military families. The article ends with an argument for scholars to take a more integrated approach to the study of military families that would help break down the current state of family scholarship and military family scholarship as parallel lines of inquiry.