Jewish Holocaust Survivors Research Articles

X-Men as J Men: The Jewish Subtext of a Comic Book Movie

The recent movie X-Men (2000) reflects the assimilationist aims, ethnic anxieties, and liberal idealism of the first-generation Jewish Americans who created the original superheroes featured in Marvel Comic Books. Their rejection of Nazi racism, abhorrence of the Holocaust, and support of the Civil Rights Movement motivated them to make Magneto, the antagonist of the X-Men, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who reasonably fears that a new race of mutants like himself may face persecution and eventual extermination if they do not mount a preemptive strike against paranoid humans intent on suppressing the threat posed by beings with special powers. The X-Men follow a mutant who advocates acculturation and the channeling of their superhuman abilities to defend humankind. Bryan Singer, the Jewish director of the movie, has retained the encounter with the Holocaust and the struggle against bigotry as key themes in his film. He also has associated these themes with other instances of past or present manifestations of mass hysteria and discrimination in American politics. Thus, the movie can be understood on two levels: superficially, it is a special effects, action adventure, science fiction movie that appeals to teenagers; substantively, it is an allegory about the continuing debate over whether the United States should promote ethnic, racial, and religious equality and diversity or whether it should become a more homogenous and less multicultural society.

A reconstruction of the size and composition of Jewish Holocaust survivors in the Netherlands, 1945

Compared to other countries that have suffered from the Nazioccupation, the destructive impact of the Holocaust on theJewish population has been particularly strong in the Netherlands. This paper gives a demographicreconstruction of the Jewish population in the Netherlands by the end of the war (1945),disaggregated by age and sex. The reconstruction is based on two approaches: a forwardprojection 1941–1945, starting from registration data supplemented by information onHolocaust losses; and a backward projection 1966–1945, starting from an enumerationof Halachic Jews carried out in 1966. The two approaches yieldtwo estimates that are comfortingly similar.

When the Nazis came to Skokie: freedom for speech we hate

In the Chicago suburb of Skokie, one out of every six Jewish citizens in the late 1970s was a survivor or was directly related to a survivor of the Holocaust. These victims of terror had resettled in America expecting to lead peaceful lives free from persecution. But their safe haven was shattered when a neo-Nazi group announced its intention to parade there in 1977. Philippa Strum's dramatic retelling of the events in Skokie (and in the courts) shows why the case ignited such enormous controversy and challenged our understanding of and commitment to First Amendment values. The debate was clear-cut: American Nazis claimed the right of free speech while their Jewish targets claimed the right to live without intimidation. The town, arguing that the march would assault the sensibilities of its citizens and spark violence, managed to win a court injunction against the marchers. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union took the case and successfully defended the Nazis' right to free speech. Skokie had all the elements of a difficult case: a clash of absolutes, prior restraint of speech, and heated public sentiment. In recreating it, Strum presents a detailed account and analysis of the legal proceedings as well as finely delineated portraits of the protagonists: Frank Collin, National Socialist Party of America leader and the son of a Jewish Holocaust survivor; Skokie community leader Sol Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor who planned a counterdemonstration against the Nazis; Skokie mayor Albert Smith, who wanted only to protect his townspeople; and ACLU attorney David Goldberger, caught in the ironic position of being a Jew defending the rights of Nazis against fellow Jews. While the ACLU did win the case, it was a costly victory-30,000 of its members left the organization. And in the end, ironically, the Nazis never did march in Skokie. Forcefully argued, Strum's book shows that freedom of speech must be defended even when the beneficiaries of that defense are far from admirable individuals. It raises both constitutional and moral issues critical to our understanding of free speech and carries important lessons for current controversies over hate speech on college campuses, inviting readers to think more carefully about what the First Amendment really means.

‘ENJOYING’ TRAUMATICALLY: THE HOLOCAUST AS‘THE SECOND GENERATION'S' OTHER

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to explore a question opened up by the growing number of life‐writings and oral testimony currently being produced by members of‘the second generation’. That is, how can the descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors free themselves from ‘the repetition of suffering’, which, in the language of Lacanian psychoanalysis, could be described as the attachment to an unbearable form of enjoyment (jouissance) of the Shoah? The paper pursues a Lacanian reading of the writing of one such descendant, the expatriate Australian writer, Lily Brett. It considers whether the themes of anxiety, death, eating, bodies and the fantasy of love between mothers and daughters that structure her stories constitute a form of testimony with, as the Lacanian Israeli psychoanalyst Rivka Warshawsky puts it, ‘the power of resolving the repetition compulsion’.

Performing Selves/Performing as Self: Autobiographical Films of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Performing Selves/Performing as Self: Autobiographical Films of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Haim Gouri and “The Jewish People Who Have Been Severely Injured”

The poet Haim Gouri is a central figure among the artists of the generation of the War of Independence and one of the first Israeli poets and novelists to express experience of the Holocaust. Gouri, who was bom in Tel Aviv in 1922, was sent to Europe in 1947 to smuggle Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Subsequently, he served in the Palmach and fought in the battles in the Negev in 1948. He attests that his encounter with the survivors of the Nazi camps changed his life, and that the experience became an obsessive theme throughout his work. This article focuses on two complementary subjects: (1) Gouri's perception of Jewish history and the effect of his encounter with Holocaust survivors in the formulation of his autobiography; (2) the concrete shaping of the experience of this encounter in his first three books of poetry, Pirhey esh, 'Ad 'alot ha-shahar, and Shirey hotam,1 and in his autobiographical novel Ha-haqira, sippuro shel Re 'u 'el?

“Rambowitz” versus the “Schlemiel” in Leon Uris' Exodus

The reprinted edition of Exodus, which appeared in 1969 (the novel first published in 1958), opens with a striking declaration from its author, Leon Uris. Pondering why the book met with universal success, Uris proclaims that it tells event unparalleled in the history of mankind...the Jews coming back after centuries of abuse, indignities, torture and murder to carve an oasis in the sand with and blood (Uric preface). Such a sentiment, of course, expresses the traditional heroic Zionist narrative of Israel's founding, recognizable to most Jews from countless rabbis' sermons, fundraising appeals by Jewish organizations, pontifications by one's relatives at Passover Seders. But the next passage is much more peculiar, though no less strident: All the cliche Jewish characters who have cluttered our fiction-the clever businessman, the doctor, the lawyer, the sulking artist...all those good folks who spend their chapters hating themselves [and] the world...all those steeped in pity...all those riders of the psychoanalysis couch...all these have been left where they rightfully belong, on the room floor (preface). The preface concludes: is about people, people who do not apologize for being born Jews or the right to live in human dignity. Their story a revelation to me as I discovered it in the farms and cities of Israel. And...it has been a revelation to...readers, Jewish and Gentile, alike (preface). Never mind that Uris has mixed his metaphors here, starting off by lambasting American fiction but ending with an image, cutting room floor, clearly taken from the movies. (The slip may further confirm the suspicion raised by Joel Blocker, reviewing the novel in Commentary, that Exodus was written with one eye on the movies [Blocker]). Never mind, either, the astounding breadth of this condemnation; one can understand Uris disliking authors who stereotype Jewish characters as sneaky lawyers, but why, for God's sake, does he object to Jews portrayed as brilliant doctors? The passage is typical of Uris' writing in that it blends simplistic thinking and stylistic ineptitude with a certain crude but undeniable power; golden riders of the psychoanalysis couch, for instance, is admittedly a memorable phrase. What concerns me most in this essay, however, is Uris' championing of Jews as a fighting people-proudly claiming what they deem rightfully theirs, Palestine, with guts and blood. In Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of Jewry ( 1990), Paul Breines has distilled this warlike conception into an archetypal figure whom he pithily labels Rambowitz. In his preface and in Exodus itself, Uris juxtaposes Rambowitz-like characters with their polar opposite, a kind of Jew he sees as vilely clutter[ing] up Jewish-American fiction, a type characterized, significantly, by a wealth of wonderfully onomatopoetic Yiddish words (each with its own subtly distinctive meaning, and many of which have entered the English language): nebbish, klutz, yold, shlimazl, shmo, shlepper, shlump, shmuck, shmegegge, shmendrick. Here, I'll be referring to this figure, a kind of anti-Rambowitz, with perhaps the best-known term from this linguistic group: schlemiel. Traditionally, of course, the schlemiel is everything Rambowitz is not: weak, cowardly, bumbling, hyper-intellectual, sexually dysfunctional, feminized, hypochondriacal, paralyzed by neurotic self consciousness. Clearly, Leon Uris is not only a writer who lionizes tough Jews, but one who considers himself a tough Jew as well. This speculation is confirmed by Uris' reply to Yehiel Aranowicz, former captain of the Exodus, the actual ship filled with Jewish Holocaust survivors that after the war ran the British blockade and docked in Palestine-the pivotal story in Uris' novel, as its title implies. Quoted in Time Magazine, Aranowicz dismissed Uris' book as neither history nor literature. …

The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief

American Indians experienced massive losses of lives, land, and culture from European contact and colonization resulting in a long legacy of chronic trauma and unresolved grief across generations. This phenomenon, labeled historical unresolved grief, contributes to the current social pathology of high rates of suicide, homicide, domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism and other social problems among American Indians. The present paper describes the concept of historical unresolved grief and historical trauma among American Indians, outlining the historical as well as present social and political forces which exacerbate it. The abundant literature on Jewish Holocaust survivors and their children is used to delineate the intergenerational transmission of trauma, grief, and the survivor's child complex. Interventions based on traditional American Indian ceremonies and modern western treatment modalities for grieving and healing of those losses are described.

Ageing Jewish Holocaust survivors: anxieties in dealing with health professionals.

Jewish Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Australia after World War II are ageing and having more frequent contact with health services. Health professionals often lack the knowledge, training, skill or personal assurance to deal with the effects of massive trauma. Increased awareness of and sensitivity to older Holocaust survivors can lessen their anxieties and, potentially, improve treatment outcome. Such experience may form a useful lesson for health professionals in dealing with refugees from other atrocities as they age.

The impact of the holocaust on the second generation: Norwegian Jewish holocaust survivors and their children

The entire population of Norwegian-born Jews who survived the German concentration camps and their children was examined, and compared to Norwegian-born Jews who escaped to Sweden, and their children. An attempt is made to look for the symptoms described as a "second generation syndrome" by several authors. The present findings do not support the presence of serious psychopathology among the children of Norwegian-born Jewish survivors as a group, but indicate a certain degree of psychological vulnerability among these children. As adults, they are more often engaged in health/social care professions and organizations and also show signs of greater assimilation to their non-Jewish surroundings than the comparison group.

The impact of the holocaust on the second generation: Norwegian Jewish holocaust survivors and their children

AbstractThe entire population of Norwegian‐born Jews who survived the German concentration camps and their children was examined, and compared to Norwegian‐bom Jews who escaped to Sweden, and their children. An attempt is made to look for the symptoms described as a “second generation syndrome” by several authors. The present findings do not support the presence of serious psychopathology among the children of Norwegian‐bom Jewish survivors as a group, but indicate a certain degree of psychological vulnerability among these children. As adults, they are more often engaged in health/social care professions and organizations and also show signs of greater assimilation to their non‐Jewish surroundings than the comparison group.

Against all Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America.

Against All Odds is the first comprehensive look at the 140,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to America and the lives they have made here. William Helmreich writes of their experiences beginning with their first arrival in the United States: the mixed reactions they encountered from American Jews who were not always eager to receive them; their choices about where to live in America; and their efforts in finding marriage partners with whom they felt most comfortable--most often other survivors. In preparation, Helmreich spent more than six years traveling the United States, listening to the personal stories of hundreds of survivors, and examining more than 15,000 pages of data as well as new material from archives that have never before been available to create this remarkable, groundbreaking work. What emerges is a picture that is sharply different from the stereotypical image of survivors as people who are chronically depressed, anxious, and fearful. This intimate, enlightening work explores questions about prevailing over hardship and adversity: how people who have gone through such experiences pick up the threads of their lives; where they obtain the strength and spirit to go on; and, finally, what lessdns the rest of us can learn about overcoming tragedy.

Multigenerational Occurrence of Survivor Syndrome Symptoms in Families of Holocaust Survivors

The purpose of this study was to determine possible transmission of psychopathology from Jewish holocaust survivors to their children and grandchildren. The Mini-Mult, Death Anxiety Scale, Louisville Behavior Checklist, and School Behavior Checklist were employed. The adult children of holocaust survivors obtained significantly higher scores on self-report measures of psychopathology than control Jewish participants. The grandchildren received significantly higher psychopathology ratings from their patients and teachers. Multigenerational transmission was inferred from the findings.

A Descriptive Demographic and Personality Study of Second-Generation Jewish Holocaust Survivors

This descriptive study was done to identify critical demographic and personality descriptors associated with second generation Jewish Holocaust survivors. Subjects rated Self, Mother, and Father on 34 adjectives from the Adjective Check List deemed relevant for this population. Findings were discussed in terms of developing realistic psychological intervention programs.

Surviving the Survivors: Late Personality Development of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

(1988). Surviving the Survivors: Late Personality Development of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. International Journal of Mental Health: Vol. 17, Mental Health Aspects of Political Repression and Violence–I, pp. 42-71.

Repatriation and restitution of Holocaust victims in post-war Denmark

Jewish Holocaust survivors faced severe economic and emotional difficulties on returning home to Denmark in 1945. Jewish families had used their savings, sold valuables and property and obtained improvised private loans in order to finance their escape to Sweden. Homes, businesses and property had been subject to theft and abuse. During and after the German occupation, however, Danish authorities worked to mitigate and ameliorate the consequences of Nazi persecution and the Danish government implemented one of the most inclusive and comprehensive restitution laws in Europe, taking into account Jewish victims of deportation as well as victims of exile. The restitution process underlines the dedication of the Danish authorities to the reintegration of the Jewish community and their interest in allaying potential ethnic conflict. Furthermore, the process is a remarkable – but overlooked – missing link between the social reforms of the 1930s and the modern Danish welfare state.