Abstract
Feelings of guilt have tormented Holocaust survivors, ranging from immediately after the liberation to later in life, for shorter or longer periods, and persisting for some throughout their entire post-war lives. Descriptions of the guilt experienced by survivors of the Nazi camps occupy an impressive amount of literature: “Why me?” was the question, when a younger and more able family member perished; “Why me?” when more productive members of the community perished; “Why me?” when a million and a half children were deprived of their lives. Many found the answer by retelling their stories, witnesses of what happened. This type of guilt is much different from the recently described phenomenon of survivor syndrome, namely the secondary guilt felt by Nazi-persecuted Jewish writers. Despite successes in all aspects of their life, these writers developed a self-incriminating guilt due to their perceived inadequacy of communicating, particularly in light of the resurging anti-Semitism worldwide. This paper deals with the survival and suicides of Nazi-persecuted Jewish writers and offers a possible explanation for their late self-destructive acts.
Highlights
The problem of guilt experienced by survivors of the World War II (WWII) concentration camps is welldocumented.[1,2] In answer to the question of “why,” many survivors found meaning in statements such as “I survived so that I could bear witness.”[3]
The pre-Third Reich records indicated that very few Jewish writers in Germany had committed suicide
The eminent historian Konrad Kwiet studied the overall Jewish experience in pre-Nazi Germany. He concluded: “Organized persecution had a profound effect on Jewish morale. ... a suicide curve would document the close correlation between persecution and suicide.”[6]. His comprehensive essay shows that during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century the incidence of suicide by German Jews was much lower than for the other two dominant religions (Protestant and Catholic Christianity)
Summary
The problem of guilt experienced by survivors of the World War II (WWII) concentration camps is welldocumented.[1,2] In answer to the question of “why,” many survivors found meaning in statements such as “I survived so that I could bear witness.”[3] This response is simplistic, for Jewish writers who survived the camps
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