Living with the Legacy of the Holocaust through the Generations

Abstract

This article draws on pioneering work in studying the impact of the Holocaust on second and third generation children of survivors of refugees from Nazi persecution. It describes the formation of the first ‘Second Generation’ groups in 1989, followed in 1991 by ‘intergenerational groups’. The work revealed issues that included transgenerational trauma, feeling different, problems with separation, children not expressing their feelings, guilt, the child as a ‘memorial candle’, attitudes towards Jewishness. As a result of their experience with first and second generation Holocaust survivors and refugees in London, the authors were invited, in 1994, to provide ‘supervision’ for a group of first and second generation psychotherapists in Prague. There, it took time for group members to address their own issues, particularly in connection with their Jewishness, which they had suppressed while living under a totalitarian regime. An appendix addresses early work on communication in perpetrator families.