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