Second-generation Holocaust Survivors Research Articles

Past Forward: Holocaust Testimony in Documentary Film

Abstract This paper addresses the use of oral history sources in my practice of documentary filmmaking as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. It examines how the filmic documentation of oral history sources can reflect aspects of testimony, memory, and postmemory, as they are theorized in the field of Holocaust Studies. In my film “Past Forward: Journeys to Transnistria,” I document the challenge of relating an intergenerational and cross-cultural story while preserving historical accuracy. Filmed in Ukraine in 2002, it tells the story of my mother, a child-survivor of the Romanian Holocaust. Through oral testimony, the film captures my mother’s survival story as she tells it to me and later to her granddaughter who documents it for a history school project. It then retraces my mother’s journey between 1941 and 1944 from her hometown of Dorohoi, Romania to Transnistria as it was called then under German-allied Romanian occupation. Survivor’s testimony combined with onsite witness interviews, and an archival military map, were used to trace the story of a little Jewish Romanian girl who survived the journey to Transnistria. Recently available archival sources have further validated her story. It has also contributed to locating the film within the broader context of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Aging second-generation Holocaust survivors and well-being: The mediating role of relational attitudes

For many years, clinical case studies that have focused on the intergenerational effects of Holocaust trauma have indicated that second-generation Holocaust survivors (SGHSs) often face relational challenges in their intimate relationships. The relational attitudes of SGHSs during childhood, as well as during adulthood, have been studied. However, only in recent years has this cohort entered the “aging adult” group. In this study, we hypothesized that well-being among Israeli aging SGHSs would be associated with parentification and with specific relational attitudes toward their adult offspring. We examined whether parentification, sense of relational entitlement, pathological concern, and authenticity in relationships mediated the association between family background and well-being. A total of 329 participants (60% SGHSs; 19% men) completed questionnaires tapping retrospective accounts of parentification during childhood, inflated and restricted senses of entitlement, pathological concern, relational authenticity, and subjective well-being. Aging SGHSs reported higher levels of parentification, inflated sense of entitlement toward offspring, pathological concern, lower levels of authenticity, and subjective well-being. The association between family background and subjective well-being was mediated by parentification, inflated sense of relational entitlement, pathological concern, and authenticity. Findings suggest that especially for aging SGHSs, childhood parentification takes a heavy toll on their sense of well-being via the hindering of a balanced sense of relational entitlement and concern and the authentic expression of self.

From a Distance: Orna Ben-Dor’s Holocaust Quintet

Orna Ben-Dor (1954- ) is one Israel's most prominent filmmakers and television directors. By the 2000s Ben-Dor had directed four films with Holocaust survivors as her main protagonists. The article analyzes the central themes in Ben-Dor's Holocaust-related films and explains how the director maintains a perspective of distance. Because she so often relates in film interviews to her parents' Holocaust and her sensitivity as a second-generation Holocaust survivor, one might have expected her to engage with the topic in her autobiographical documentary, released in 2009. However, as this article will show, Ben-Dor downplays the Holocaust in this film and turns the camera inward to focus on gender rather than on the hallmark themes of her previous films: PTSD of Holocaust survivors, the transgenerational transfer of trauma to the second generation and the absorption of Holocaust survivors in Israel. As a director who has played such an important part in Israel's Holocaust commemoration, Ben-Dor remains strangely reticent about her own personal Holocaust-related story.

On Not Looking Jewish: Visualizing Submerged Memories and Appearances

For more than 25 years, artist Barbara Loftus, born 1946, has developed a substantial body of work, across figurative painting, book works and creative documentary film, rooted in her experience as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Loftus’s mother, Hildegard Basch [1917–2007], was born into an assimilated middle-class Jewish family but the securities of her comfortable life in Berlin were devastated by the catastrophic events of Nazi Germany. While Hildegard was able to take refuge in England in 1939, the rest of her family—Loftus’s grandparents Sigismund and Herta, and her uncle Heinz—were transported to Auschwitz Birkenau in 1942 and perished in the camp. In August 2021, cultural historian Annebella Pollen visited Loftus’ studio in Brighton, UK, to discuss the enduring themes of her artistic practice and, particularly Loftus’s use of photographs and dress as sources and methods for exploring Jewish identity and post-memory.

Lost in a Universe of No Inherent Meaning: Psychoanalysis and Existentialism

Addressing the patient’s anxieties about the meaning of life and death as integral phenomena of the life cycle is not commonly discussed in the analytic literature. A central dilemma of analytic work is the effort to facilitate change in the life of a suffering patient while also bearing in mind the inescapable human destiny, i.e., the certainty of death. All too often, these factors remain in the background while dealing with other conflicts or misfortunes. The analyst, like the patient, is aware of the brevity of life and is susceptible to the same fate, and thus may feel defenseless, helpless, and limited in what can be offered. This article incorporates the existentialist thinking of Camus on the subject and illuminates it with analytic work with unspoken trauma of a second-generation Holocaust survivor.

Predicting Depression Among Spouses of Ex-POWs: The Contribution of Exposure to Violence, Trauma, and Stress Through the Life Cycle.

The current longitudinal study focused on predicting depression among spouses of former Israeli war veterans (combat veterans or ex-prisoners of war [ex-POWs]). The research examined the direct and moderating role of secondary trauma related to their husbands' war-related experiences, stress related to being exposed to intimate partner violence in their relationship, being a second-generation Holocaust (SGH) survivor, and the effects of additional stressful life events (SLEs) since the end of the war. Wives of ex-POWs and combat veterans (N = 129) participated in two time measurements. Spouses of ex-POWs were found to be at higher risk of depression and psychological violence. Psychological violence was a risk factor for depression. The three-way interaction among psychological violence, being a SGH survivor, and experiencing SLEs was significant. In addition, experiencing earlier stressful events had a protective effect. The findings suggest that the association between early exposure and additive exposure through life is a complex iteration of factors and does not necessarily follow the vulnerability perspective.

Coming of Age Through Bande dessinée

This interview with Belgian-Israeli graphic novelist and political cartoonist Michel Kichka covers his growing up in Belgium during the Golden Age of bande dessinée. The author discusses his early readings and influences, as well as the development of his own career in teaching and drawing. The discussion focuses in particular on the creation and publication of his graphic novels Deuxième Génération [Second Generation] and Falafel sauce piquante [Falafel with Spicy Sauce], published in 2012 and 2018. These works foreground essential questions about Kichka’s experience as a second-generation Holocaust survivor and about his relationship with Israel. Taking an international perspective, the interview sheds further light on the emergence of the comics medium in Israel and the transnational reception of Franco-Belgian bande dessinée. It also considers Kichka’s work and engagement as a political cartoonist. Interview conducted via email, following Michel Kichka’s keynote at the “Tradition and Innovation in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée” conference.

The impact of attitudes, motivational factors, and emotions on the image of a dark tourism site and the desire of the victims’ descendants to visit it

ABSTRACT The present study explores the influence of attitudes, motivational factors, and emotions on the image of a Holocaust tourism site and ultimately, the desire of the victims’ descendants to visit it. The study, which was conducted with an online questionnaire distributed to a purposeful sample of 243 second-generation Holocaust survivors residing in Israel, found that the image of this dark tourism site was a significant mediator between: (a) respondents’ attitudes, (b) respondents’ emotions of animosity and grief, (c) heritage motivations, and the intent to visit the destination in which the dark tourism site is located. The results also highlight the importance of respondents’ feelings towards the country in which this dark tourism attraction is located. Respondents’ health constraints emerged as a significant moderator in the relationship between the image of the dark tourism site and the desire to visit the country in which the attraction is located. The study concludes with implications and directions for future research.

‘In the liveliest place, my mother's bosom, there was death’ – mother-daughter relationships in the work of Rachel Nemesh, Second-Generation Holocaust survivor

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the artwork of Israeli artist, Rachel Nemesh, a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor. The assemblage to be discussed was exhibited in her solo exhibition, One Flesh, in 2020. The corpus analysis will be divided into four themes: (a) The Big Mother – works describing the elderly mother of Nemesh in a monumental manner; (b) Pieta versions – works focusing on bodily scenes of mother and daughter closely tangled; (c) Body-Parts: works showing randomly detached body organs; (d) Domestic Space – the artist's mother in her home. The study will be framed by two main fields: art centering on the Holocaust and feminist ideas focusing on mother-daughter relationships. Theoretical and visual examination will be enhanced by interviews with the artist aiming at profoundly decoding her artwork, claimed to resonate a feminine artistic language. An attempt to formulate an original interpretation of Holocaust Second-Generation's art, combined with a feminist point of view, will be made here. Rachel Nemesh's artwork is being investigated here for the very first time.

Courage and Fear by Ola Hnatiuk

Reviewed by: Courage and Fear by Ola Hnatiuk Joseph W. Moser Ola Hnatiuk, Courage and Fear. Translated by Ewa Siwak. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019. 534 pp. Ola Hnatiuk's Courage and Fear starts out as Holocaust memoir by a second-generation Holocaust survivor, chronicling her mother's survival in hiding in Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv during the German occupation, 1941–1945, but the book is actually a large intellectual history of artists and the intelligentsia of Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv, meticulously researched and carefully translated from Polish into English by Ewa Siwak. After a few pages, it becomes clear that the book is much more—it is a work of literature, as Hnatiuk tries to tell the interwoven stories of various people in Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv between 1918 and 1944, and the book intentionally does not proceed chronologically. Reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, the reader gains an insight into the historical, political, and ethnic upheavals in this fascinating city between the end of Austrian rule in 1918 and the second Soviet liberation in 1944. [End Page 126] The book was writt en for a Polish audience by a scholar who is an expert in Ukrainian Studies. The author, carefully navigating Polish-Ukrainian relationships in this period, writes against the ethnic prejudice that both groups have of one another, while also chronicling how such nationalist prejudices profoundly influenced decisions in this Eastern Galician city. She uses the Ukrainian terms of the cities that are now in Ukraine; thus she refers to Lviv by its Ukrainian name, no matter who was historically in charge of the city. Of course, this immediately shows how charged a topic like Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv can be, because identifying the city by its German name either refers to the Austrian period (1772–1918) or the German period (1941–1945), Lwow refers to the city's Polish (1918–1939) or Russian (1944–1991) period. The three large ethnic groups of the city in the period covered by this book were Polish and Ukrainian non-Jews and Jews who were mostly Polish-speaking. Despite the Austrian rule in the nineteenth century, Lviv retained its significance as a Polish-speaking city, where the elite spoke Polish, while the people in the surrounding rural areas where primarily Ukrainians and Ruthenians. The Jews assimilated from Yiddish to Polish, and German became the most important secondary language, as the Austrians allowed the city to operate in Polish primarily. With the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, Lviv was situated at the fault line of ethnic conflict between Poles and Ukrainians, both of whom harbored varying degrees of antisemitism. German (during the Austrian period and the Nazi occupation) and Russian after 1944 were also important languages, whose speakers exerted influence over the city. Hnatiuk exposes the ethnic prejudice that the various groups had against each other. The Poles oppressed the Ukrainian intelligentsia during the interwar period. The Soviets elevated Ukrainian and suppressed Polish in 1939 to divide and conquer the city, though they were not thrilled by Ukrainian exceptionalism that threatened to undermine the Russian hegemony prevalent in the Soviet Union. In 1941, the Germans elevated the non-Jewish Ukrainians over non-Jewish Poles while the vast majority of Jews in the city were murdered in pogroms in the city or through deportation to the Belzec extermination camp. Yet, non-Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Ukrainians helped some Jews survive in hiding or assisted in procuring false papers identifying Jews as either Poles or Ukrainians. After World War II, the Soviets expelled the Poles from Lviv, ensconcing the city firmly in the Ukrainian SSR. [End Page 127] The many stories in this book about artists and intellectuals who survive, and many who die, in the Holocaust, as well as the complex and constantly changing relationship that non-Jews had with the German Nazi occupiers as well as with officials during the periods of Soviet rule in the city illustrate how difficult it is to make any generalizations about this part of Eastern Europe. Instead, the book demonstrates how chaotic these times really were in Lviv and how individual survival hinged on luck and the on chaotic nature of the changing rulers...

Transmitted trauma as badge of honor: Phenomenological accounts of Holocaust descendant resilient vulnerability

This study explores the phenomenological experience of the transmitted trauma legacies of Jewish-Israeli Holocaust descendants and their self-perceived sense of vulnerability and resilience. 55 in-depth interviews were conducted with second-generation Holocaust survivors in Israel in 2001–2004 and another 20 interviews in 2010–2011. Ethnographic interviews reveal unique local configurations of emotional vulnerability and strength. Respondents normalize and valorize emotional wounds describing them as a “scratch” and as a “badge of honor”. This self-depiction challenges the typical profile in the literature of the pathologized and vulnerable descendant. The meaning of the emotional “scratch” is mediated by culturally particular spiritual and moral-political worldviews as well as silent expressions of intergenerational memory that function both as risk and resilience factors for descendants’ distress. The finding that descendants resist binary readings of wellbeing and distress/illness challenges the cross-cultural translation of the resilience construct as a static construct or measure of wellness. Results point to ways that resilience and vulnerability may interact, qualifying one another in the process of meaning making. This concurrent experience of resilience and vulnerability challenges some key assumptions of the regnant “Holocaust model” of pathology in trauma theory.

Memory Mediation by First- and Second-Generation Survivors: Why They Said Nothing: Mother and Daughter on One and the Same War by Magda Bošan Simin and Nevena Simin

The reasons for researching the works of Yugoslav author Magda Bosan Simin are several: (1) her novel When the Sour Cherries Bloom (1958) was probably the first literary representation of the Holocaust written by a woman author in Yugoslavia; (2) Bosan Simin represents the Holocaust in multiple formats (documentary prose, memoir, autobiographical novel); (3) the book Why They Said Nothing: Mother and Daughter on One and the Same War (2009, English edition 2015) is a narrative comprised of texts written by both Magda Bosan Simin as a Holocaust survivor and her daughter Nevena Simin as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. The research focuses on Holocaust survivors and their post-Holocaust children, issues of memory in Holocaust representation, types of memory, memory mediation, author’s intentionality, gender and identity issues.

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust

The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust

Identity Disorders of Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors

ABSTRACTHealthy child development is outlined, with particular attention to its crucial element of identity formation. Second-generation Holocaust survivors are saddled with a mission of “carrying the torch” which is inconsistent with normal identity formation. Over and above the normative milestones in acquiring personal identity, children of this generation had particular difficulties establishing a sense of self distinct from family and religious identity. This threatened ego integrity portends potential identity dissonance, disruption of the developmental process, and problems in the adult lives of second-generation survivors. The author’s personal narrative is featured to highlight identity challenges inherent in the life of a “memorial candle.”

Second-generation Holocaust survivors: Psychological, theological, and moral challenges

ABSTRACTDrawing from trauma theory, psychodynamic conceptualization, developmental psychology, clinical data, and personal experience, this article portrays a life haunted by tragedy predating its victims. Healthy child development is outlined, with particular attention to socialization and theological perspectives. Key characteristics of trauma are delineated, highlighting the nuances of trauma that are most harmful. As is the case with general trauma, Holocaust survivors are described as evincing survivor’s guilt and paranoia in response to their experiences. Divergent disorders resulting from the Holocaust are described for 1st-generation and 2nd-generation survivors, respectively. Primary trauma responses and pervasive attitudes of survivors are shown to have harmful ramifications on their children’s personality and worldview as well as on their interpersonal and theistic object relations. These limitations translate into problems in the adult lives of second generation survivors.

On Meerapfel's <em>My German Friend</em>

On Meerapfel's My FriendMy Friend. Directed by Jeanine Meerapfel. 2012. Argentina-Germany: Malena Filmproduktion/Ricardo Freixa/Geisendorfer Film- und Fernsehproduktion/ Cine Postproduction/Torus Film/Westdeutscher Rundfunk-WDR, 100 mins.My Friend (El amigo aleman), an Argentine-German co-production by filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel, is a love story between the daughter of Jewish refugees and the son of a Nazi officer who immigrated to Argentina. Sulamit Lowenstein (Celeste Cid) and Friedrich Burg (Max Riemelt) begin their lifelong romantic relationship as adolescent neighbors in a wealthy area of Buenos Aires before the coup d'etat that deposed President Juan Peron (in office 1946-1952, 1952-1955, 1973-1974) in 1955. During Peron's first presidential term, both Jews and Nazis migrated to find shelter in Argentina. Ashamed once he discovers his father's true identity as a former SS officer, Friedrich severs his family ties. Despite his romantic relationship with Sulamit, he moves to Germany, seeking to understand his father's past.After receiving an academic scholarship to pursue a university degree, Sulamit also moves to Germany, much to her family's disappointment. Upon reuniting with Friedrich, she realizes that their relationship is not his first priority; he is instead dedicated to political activism in the student movements of the 1960s. Driven by revolutionary ideology, Friedrich returns to Argentina and joins a guerrilla group during Argentina's military dictatorship (1976-1983); he is arrested and sent to Rawson prison in Patagonia. With the return of democracy in 1983, Friedrich is liberated from jail and establishes himself in Patagonia, where he works with the Mapuche indigenous community. Years later, Sulamit, an independent woman in her forties with an academic career in Germany, travels to Argentina and then makes the trek to Patagonia to reunite with Friedrich.As in her earlier movie The Girlfr iend (La amiga, Argentina-West Germany, 1988), Meerapfel includes several biographical elements in My Friend. Meerapfel was born in 1943 in Argentina, where she lived until 1964, when she moved to Germany, the same country from which her parents escaped from during the Nazi regime. My Friend examines the challenges encountered by second-generation Holocaust survivors and addresses the experiences confronting the children of the perpetrators. Sulamit and Friedrich's relationship and lives are influenced by the way in which they relate to their forebears' past. Friedrich is driven by radical ideology that stems from a need to understand his father's deeds. He seeks to reconcile and repair the past through political activism and community engagement. Sulamit takes a more personal approach to overcoming her traumatic family history. Her actions are fueled by concrete and pragmatic interpersonal motivations-in particular, to establish a meaningful relationship with Friedrich.The fact that Friedrich is a Nazi officer's son does not actually constitute an obstacle for Sulamit, despite her parents' initial distress at the very idea of a German friend. (Sulamit's relationship with Friedrich, however, is accepted by her family years later.) Sulamit consciously chooses Friedrich with full awareness of his family's past and without assigning him the moral burden of his father's deeds. Her sense of identity transcends the confining forms of membership in traditional categories of national, religious, or ethnic identification. …

Palliative Care Among Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors: Communication Barriers

Palliative Care Among Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors: Communication Barriers

Resisting the Father's Narrative: A Study of Lea Aini's <em>Vered ha-Levanon</em>

Vered ha-Levanon (Rose of Lebanon; 2008), an autobiographical novel by Lea Aini, suggests a profound and subversive discussion on issues that constitute the foundation of cultural and social identity in Israel. The novel includes several narratives belonging to various literary genres but also deviating from them, including personal testimony, the story of second-generation Holocaust survivors, and a Bildungsroman. Each of these narratives is substantially deconstructed, and its components and contents reorganized. Two plots are interwoven in the novel: that of the narrator childhood as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and that of her meetings with Yonatan the wounded soldier. Each narrative represents a different father—the private one and the national one. The narrator, trapped between these fathers, is struggling to find her authentic voice. In doing so, she rejects both narratives, but at the same time she uses her personal story in order to stress some essential insights about the sociopolitical situation in Israel. INTROduc TION Lea Aini’s autobiographical novel Vered ha-Levanon (Rose of Lebanon), 1 is a groundbreaking study of a range of national, social, and personal topics. Aini deconstructs categories that constitute the foundation of cultural and social identity in Israel. Most important of these are representations of the Holocaust, its status in Israel as a mega-narrative, and its role in constructing self- and national identities. The essence of the novel’s critical contribution is in its exposure of themes that had been previously almost entirely overlooked in Hebrew literature. These topics include the silenced history of Greek Jews and the story of the Shapira

Culture and Language: Bilingualism in the German–Jewish Experience and Across Contexts

This paper argues for the inherent connection between language and culture in the therapeutic setting, which is illustrated using an example of a bilingual therapy. It examines the bilingual interaction between a German-speaking second-generation Holocaust survivor and a German-speaking analyst of German descent. By paying attention to the shifts between German and English, it is possible to see how the therapeutic process is grounded in the culture and language of its participants. Using a hermeneutic perspective, this paper suggests that culture and history are disclosed in language in ways that are often outside of conscious awareness. The intersubjective nature of bilingual therapy is demonstrated by the fact that both client and analyst are participants in the process of language shifting. The role of language and the function of culture is considered across therapeutic contexts.