Robert Krell

Multigenerational Perspectives on Coping with the Holocaust Experience: An Attachment Perspective for Understanding the Developmental Sequelae of Trauma across Generations

In this paper, we advance a new approach to the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust experiences, by focusing on attachment theory. The approach is used as a framework for interpretation of the results of three studies on Holocaust survivors and their offspring, from different countries (The Netherlands, Canada, and Israel), and based on different conceptual approaches and methods of data collection (quantitative as well as qualitative). The literature is divided with regard to the extent and depth of long-term effects of the Holocaust. Attachment theory allows the integration of the phenomena of attachment, separation, and loss, which appear to be core concepts in the three studies presented here. The notion of insecure-ambivalent attachment sheds some light on the observed preoccupation with issues of attachment and separation in the second generation. Furthermore, the theme of “the conspiracy of silence” is discussed in the context of attachment disorganisation. Attachment theory transcends the traditional boundaries between clinical and nonclinical interpretations, in stressing the continuous and cumulative nature of favourable and unfavourable child-rearing circumstances. In this context, insecure attachment should be regarded as coping with suboptimal child-rearing environments.

Child Survivors of the Holocaust — Strategies of Adaptation*:

Child survivors have only recently been recognized as a developmentally distinct group with psychological experiences different from older survivors. The wartime circumstances of Nazi persecution caused enforced separation from family and friends, and all the survivors experienced persecution in the form of physical and emotional abuse, starvation and degradation, and were witnesses to cruelty. This paper is based on information from interviews and therapy with 25 child survivors, the majority of whom were not patients. Coping strategies are discussed in terms of their survival value in wartime and post-war adaptive value. Three themes which reverberate throughout the lives of child survivors, now adults, are discussed in greater detail: bereavement, memory and intellect. The fact that the majority of child survivors live normal and creative lives provides an opportunity to learn what factors have served them over 40 years, to provide the resilience and strength to cope after such a shattering beginning.

Erikson's "components of a healthy personality" among Holocaust survivors immediately and 40 years after the war.

This study assessed the degree to which Holocaust survivors have dealt successfully with the eight psychosocial crises thought by Erikson (1959) to mark important stages in life-span development. In Study 1, 50 autobiographical interviews of survivors videotaped 30–50 years after the war were subjected to thematic content analysis. Relevant passages were coded as representing either a favorable or an unfavorable outcome as defined by Erikson. Survivors described significantly more favorable than unfavorable outcomes for seven of the crises; the exception was Trust vs. Mistrust. In Study 2, audiotaped Holocaust survivor interviews conducted in 1946 were scored in the same way and compared with the results of Study 1. There were several significant differences as well as similarities between the two data sets, the later interviews mostly showing changes in the positive direction.

Coping strategies in the narratives of holocaust survivors

Abstract Although the memories of Holocaust survivors have been explored in a vast number of autobiographical, biographical, and clinical publications, there has been very little application of nomothetic as opposed to idiographic methodology in this area. Group-based research has primarily involved clinical samples. The current study was designed to obtain objective, quantitative data as to how survivors now functioning in the community recall coping with the problems that they had confronted. Content analysis was performed on 30 videotaped autobiographical interviews of Holocaust survivors, comprised of 5 men and 5 women in each of 3 age groups (child, adolescent, or adult at the end of the Holocaust). There were significant time period (pre-Holocaust, Early and Late Holocaust, post-Holocaust) differences in the appearance of 8 coping strategies; age differences in 2 strategies; and 2 significant age x time period interactions. In general, memories of coping during the Holocaust emphasize direct, proble...

Child Holocaust survivors as parents: a transgenerational perspective.

Children of Holocaust survivors frequently point out problems associated with having been raised by survivor parents. However, large-scale studies demonstrate that both Holocaust survivors and their children function within the normal range. This study addresses relationship issues between the younger survivors and their children. It does not compare them with nonsurvivor families, who may exhibit similar patterns. We found wide gaps between how child survivor parents and their children viewed parental expectations and behaviors. These discrepancies are described as 4 paradoxes.

Therapeutic Value of Documenting Child Survivors

As a child survivor/psychiatrist who is preoccupied with the implications of the Holocaust, the author has been involved in documentation projects to secure eyewitness accounts of that time. For the great majority of survivors who have participated, the taping proved a therapeutic experience through integration of traumatic fragments into a “whole” with a purpose, that of leaving a legacy for history and education. The child survivors particularly have not related their stories and, as a consequence, continue to bear a great psychologic burden. Documentation affords the opportunity to integrate, as adults, the complex childhood events which helped shape their personalities and lives.

Structural aspects of survivors' thinking about the Holocaust

Videotaped interviews of 30 Holocaust survivors were scored for integrative complexity, the recognition of alternate perspectives or dimensions of a topic (“differentiation”) and the joint consideration of several perspectives or dimensions (“integration”). Memories showed decreased differentiation and integration as they moved from pre-war life to the shock and upheaval when organized persecution began. High complexity levels reflected survivors mustering their resources to enhance their chances of survival and successful postwar adaptation. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of quantitative, objective content analytic methods in Holocaust survivor research, add a cognitive dimension to the study of survival during and after extreme situations, and confirm theoretical propositions about decision making and information processing under stress.

The Holocaust as a context for telling life stories.

Using a narrative approach, this study explores the role of the Holocaust in the life stories of Survivors, contrasted with two comparison groups (one Jewish and one non-Jewish) whose direct experiences did not include surviving the Holocaust. Using the technique of the life line and measures such as number and type of life events identified, as well as the events marking the beginning and ending of the life story, several differences were found between the three groups. Survivors identified an average of 10 life events, fewer than the non-Jewish comparison group (18) but more than the Jewish comparison group (7). Most of these events were positive, although less so for the Jewish comparison group, with very few future events identified by any of the groups.

Holocaust survivors and their children: Comments on psychiatric consequences and psychiatric terminology

Abstract Progress in the description and therapy of Holocaust survivors and their children has been hampered by unsatisfactory terminology, denial on the part of the therapist, and occasionally hostility to the survivor. The author suggests that the therapists inability to comprehend the extent of Nazi sadism has unwittingly led clinical researchers to attempt to understand the perpetrators by investigating survivors. To survivors are attributed “Nazi-like” behaviors through such mechanisms as identification with the aggressor. These behaviors are then scrutinized as if they belonged to the victim, rather than the persons who committed the original aggression. Aggression has been misunderstood in the context of Holocaust survivors, as has the concept of survivor guilt, which is less commonly present than has been assumed. The failure to refine survivor terminology has at times misdirected treatment and obscured the remarkable adaptations and coping styles of the majority of the survivor generation and its offspring.

Holocaust survivors and the world of work

Work is crucial to both personal adjustment and societal attitudes toward the individual. Work defines most people’s standard of living; it is one of the major determinants of the respect in which one is held by society, and a primary source of satisfaction—or frustration—of important motives such as the needs for achievement and self-respect. Work takes up a major portion of the time, energy, thought, and affect of most adults: it is “basic to adult existence.” All of this is perhaps particularly true for refugees. Depending on their original homeland, their sources of self-definition and social esteem might have included clan or tribal networks and status, family or personal status in the community, a secure position in the societal hierarchy, and accumulated wealth. For the most part, refugees from genocide lose these frameworks in the new society; even traditional ethnic roles, such as those of Chinese in Vietnam and Cambodia, Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Jews in pre-war Poland, the mosaic of religions and ethnicities in the former Yugoslavia, and so on, are eroded in countries of refuge where such groups do not have a well-understood identity. The most salient replacement marker of one’s place in the new society becomes individual occupational success. One study of émigré survivors of the Armenian genocide concluded that professional success even mediates the long-term effects of persecution: for those who experience continued economic hardship in the new country, more than for the professionally successful, “the genocide looms as the overpowering force that has shaped their destiny.” Dedication to family and “fulfilling work” have been seen as important in the self-healing of child survivors of genocide, and being employed is a significant contributor to satisfaction with life in the country of refuge. Governments and citizens of receiving countries consider work to be one of the most salient aspects of how newcomers fit into society. On the one hand, there is concern that they will be unable to contribute productively to the work of the country; on the other, that they will be so dedicated, hard-working, and self-denying that they will simultaneously lower employment and business opportunities for native-born citizens and also fail to participate in other aspects of the society. Journal of Genocide Research (2005), 7(2), June, 243–254