Group Of Holocaust Survivors Research Articles

1944: A Preview of Much of What Would Follow

This article focuses on the little-known arrival of the first group of Holocaust survivors in Canada in 1944. They arrived from Lisbon and came through the efforts of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Congress Executive Director Saul Hayes spearheaded this refugee project. The author argues that, while few in number, efforts to negotiate the entry of immigrants, and subsequent Jewish communal efforts to absorb immigrant populations in Toronto, and reactions to the immigrants, were to prove paradigmatic predictors of communal management and reaction to much larger Holocaust survivor influxes after the war. While the article focuses on immigrant absorption in Toronto, it also discusses broader issues associated with this movement and the role played by the Yiddish press in reporting refugee arrival.

Jean Améry: Resentment as Ethic and Ontology

Against the view that trauma cripples the survivor’s ability to account for his or her own experience, Jean Amery, a survivor of Auschwitz, argued that trauma speaks a language of its own. In this language, what may be taken as a clinical symptom, the inability to let go of a traumatic past, is actually an ethical stance on behalf of history’s victims. Amery wrote about aging in similar terms. Aging and death are an assault on the values of life, an assault that Amery rejected with equal vigor, and in much the same terms, as he rejected the history that does not stop with the Holocaust. In the second case, Amery is mistaken. Aging and death, allowed to proceed at a natural pace, serve life, the succession of generations. This argument is pursued by comparing Amery’s position with that of a large group of Holocaust survivors. It may appear as if Amery’s argument about the Holocaust has little to do with his argument about aging. In fact, they are related, to the detriment of both arguments.

A study of attitudes of viewers of the film ?Shoah? towards an incident of mass murder by Israeli soldiers (Kfar Kassem, 1956)

In this study (which took place before theintifada), 107 viewers in Tel Aviv purchasing tickets to see the monumental movie “Shoah” were asked about an event of mass murder by Israelis of innocent, civilian Arab men, women and children at the village of Kfar Kassem in 1956. Sixty two percent opposed the massacre while 38% either accepted or “explained” it. Significant differences were found between Israelis in the mid-range of their lives (30–59), more of whom opposed the massacre (76%) than the very young and older (54%); and betweennon-Holocaust survivors, more of whom opposed the massacre (74%) than a combined group of Holocaust survivors, children of survivors and others who expressed a closeness to the Holocaust (54%). Nonsignificant trends for more frequent opposition to the massacre were seen among males than females, university educated than less than university educated, Israeli born than non-Israeli in country of origin, and younger age (up to 30) at time of immigration than older. Taken together, there emerges a suggestive picture of identification with use of power on the part of segments of the population traditionally understood to be weaker or lesser in status: the youngest and oldest, females, the less educated, immigrants to Israel—especially the older and those who suffer the Holocaust more deeply.