Effects of the Holocaust

The Holocaust was a tragic point in history which many people

believe never happened. Others who survived it thought it should

never have been. Not only did this affect the people who lived

through it, it also affected everyone who was connected to those

fortunate individuals who survived. The survivors were lucky to

have made it but there are times when their memories and flashbacks

have made them wish they were the ones who died instead of living

with the horrible aftermath. The psychological effects of the

Holocaust on people from different parts such as survivors of

Israel and survivors of the ghettos and camps vary in some ways yet

in others are profoundly similar. The vast number of prisoners of

various nationalities and religions in the camps made such

differences inevitable. Many contrasting opinions have been

published about the victims and survivors of the holocaust based on

the writers' different cultural backrounds, personal experiences

and intellectual

traditions. Therefore, the opinions of the authors

of such books and entries of human behavior and survival in the

concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe are very diverse.

The Survivors of the Holocaust: General Survey

Because the traumatization of the Holocaust was both

individual and collective, most individuals made efforts to create

a "new family" to replace the nuclear family that had been lost.

In order for the victims to resist dehumanization and regression

and to find support, the members of such groups shared stories

about the past, fantasies of the future and joint prayers as well

as poetry and expressions of personal and general human aspirations

for hope and love. Imagination was an important means of

liberation from the frustrating reality by opening an outlet for

the formulation of plans for the distant future, and by spurring to

immediate actions.

Looking at the history of the Jewish survivors, from the

beginning of the Nazi occupation until the liquidation of the

ghettos shows that there are common features and similar

psychophysiological patterns in their responses to the

persecutions. The survivors often experienced several phases of

psychosocial response, including attempts to actively master the

traumatic situation, cohesive affiliative actions with intense

emotional links, and finally, passive compliance with the

persecutors. These phases must be understood as the development of

special mechanisms to cope with the tensions and dangers of the

surrounding horrifying reality of the Holocaust.

There were many speculations that survivors of the Holocaust

suffered from a static concentration camp syndrome. These theories

were proved to have not been valid by research that was done

immediately after liberation. Clinical and theoretical research

focused more on psychopathology than on the question of coping and

the development of specific adaptive mechanisms during the

Holocaust and after. The descriptions of the survivors' syndrome in

the late 1950's and 1960's created