Abstract

This paper explores the traumatic memories of ageing Shoah survivors who attend a Jewish social and therapeutic support facility in London (UK). The study investigates the perceived differences in trauma within a diverse group of members who partake in the day centre. The difference in Shoah experience contextualises how survivors of ghettos and concentration camps possess a salient relationship with food, notably bread which acts as an enduring symbol of catastrophe for participants. The meanings that underlie death amongst camp survivors are evaluated, where decisions regarding the end of life stage can be interpreted as a shared experience with those who perished during the Shoah. Results exemplify how religious and cultural elements of Judaism mediate the trauma that has become thoroughly embodied for participants. survival is steeped in intersubjective acts of remembrance, offering a novel contribution to the anthropological study of genocide.

Highlights

  • Nestled amidst London’s sprawling suburbia is a day center which offers social and therapeutic support to aging Jewish Shoah1 survivors

  • Departing from related Jewish ethnographic studies of aging and space, this paper describes how the service at Bitachon offers the members a token and taste of their pre-war lives from a time before the Shoah and the personal as well as collective tragedies which ensued

  • This paper has illustrated how a dedicated support facility with a social and therapeutic service attends to the embodied traumas held by aging Jewish Shoah survivors

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Summary

Introduction

Nestled amidst London’s sprawling suburbia is a day center which offers social and therapeutic support to aging Jewish Shoah survivors. This meant that the opportunity to hear and speak Yiddish brought members back to a pre-war era; “back all the way that life used to be,” claimed Isaac, a Hungarian-born survivor of Auschwhitz-Birkenau Such statements exemplify how the social and therapeutic service at the Center attempts to restore elements of the elders’ former lives and customs in Eastern Europe, and can perhaps be considered an interpretation of “culturally-appropriate” care for this particular group of aging victims of violence. The weekly social program includes, but is not limited to, Bridge, art, creative writing, Israeli dancing, keep fit, Yiddish, guest speakers and discussions, as well as a spouse’s group The latter group was interesting to understand how peer or social support is directed to the marriage partners of Shoah survivors, which is considered necessary because, as Hindi, a British-Jewish spouse, remarked, “we all have the same, I wouldn’t say a problem, but experiences. This questions the extent to which “non-survivors” in the Center (i.e., its administering staff) generate – and enforce – subjective perceptions of what constitutes a survivor and how this compares with the perspective held by those who were incarcerated in the ghettoes and concentration or extermination camps

Research Methods
A Community of Survivors
Concluding Reflections
Full Text
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