The Holocaust In Three Generations

Victims and Perpetrators What form does the dialogue about the family past during the Nazi period take in families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and in families of Nazi perpetrators and bystanders? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it have on the lives of their children and grandchildren? What are the differences between the dialogue about the family past and the Holocaust in families of Nazi perpetrators and in families of Holocaust survivors? This book examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies.

Genia spent two years in Auschwitz. Ze'ev fought with the Partisans. Olga hid in the Aryan section of Warsaw. Anya fled to Russia. Laura lived in Libya under the Italian fascist regime. All five survived the Holocaust, emigrated to Israel, and started families there. How the traumatic experience of these survivors has been transmitted, even transformed, from one generation to the next is the focus of Fear and Hope. From survivors to grandchildren, members of these families narrate their own stories across three generations, revealing their different ways of confronting the original trauma of the Holocaust. Dan Bar-On's biographical analyses of these life stories identify several main themes that run throughout: how family members reconstruct major life events in their narratives, what stories remain untold, and what is remembered and what forgotten. Together, these life stories and analyses eloquently explore the intergenerational reverberations of the Holocaust, particularly the ongoing tension between achieving renewal in the present and preserving the past. We learn firsthand that the third generation often exerts a healing influence in these families: their spontaneous questions open blocked communications between their parents and their grandparents. And we see that those in the second generation, often viewed as passive recipients of familial fallout from the Holocaust, actually play a complex and active role in navigating between their parents and their children. This book has implications far beyond the horrific reality at its heart. A unique account of the interplay between individual biography and wider social and cultural processes, Fear and Hope offers a fresh perspective on the transgenerational effects of trauma--and new hope for families facing the formidable task of "working through."

What form does the dialogue about the family past during the Nazi period take in families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and in families of Nazi perpetrators and bystanders? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it have on the lives of their children and grandchildren?What are the differences between the dialogue about the family past and the Holocaust in families of Nazi perpetrators and in families of Holocaust survivors?This book examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies.

Motivated by her Auschwitz-survivor mother's death to explore her world, psychologist Alteras (Hunter College, City College of New York) takes testimony from three generations of women and finds connecting themes in their life stories. She studies her mother's generation who grew up in Eastern Europe, her own cohorts who had immigrated to the US as youngsters, and their children who were born into an environ of heightened Jewish and feminist consciousness. The book concludes with reflections on shifts in, and survival of, Jewish identity. Includes photos of each generation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

How is the Holocaust understood by people across generations? Whereas during, and in the aftermath of WWII, the experience carried immediacy and traumatic meaning for the first generation of Holocaust survivors, received understandings of the second generation may be distinguished from the first. The second generation's perception, recounted from memories by parents and relatives, sought to protect the legitimacy of an earlier generation's lived reality, while also lending further layers of understanding. Now, with the third-generation post-Holocaust, memory is further diluted, posing potential danger of treating the Holocaust as some distant horror having lesser real meaning. This empirical project seeks to explore meaning and understanding of the Holocaust -- the terms that contour the way it is defined in the minds of inter-generational subjects, how use and connotations have changed over the past eighty-plus years, and specifically, how the Holocaust is presented to the world today. The study will analyze use of language, survivor testimonies, interviews, psychology, current events and historical facts to discern whether understandings of the Holocaust have evolved or remained the same.

Naomi Haber was born during the 1960s in Germany to a Jewish father, a survivor of eight concentration camps, and a German Christian mother who converted to Judaism when they married.Their marriage would defy convention and popular opinion. Their children would grow up in a nation that had only barely begun to deal with the genocide they had perpetrated some two decades earlier. Naomi grew up in the small town of Straubing, Germany and she was raised as a German Jewish girl in a country anxious, uncertain, and all too eager to forget its fresh and treacherous history. In grade school, Haber was surrounded by classmates who weren't accepting of Jewish history or culture. Neither textbooks nor history classes would venture to discuss the Nazis and their annihilation of world Jewry. "Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, and Germans who hated the Jews lived all around us," writes Haber. Wanting acceptance, Haber would leave Germany at age sixteen to work on a kibbutz in Israel. Two years later, she would marry and settle in the United States. Eventually, she would remarry and make her way through this new country while still tending to the wounds of the old world. A cohesive story told from the viewpoint of a child of a survivor, I Didn't Kill Jesus is a narrative that will draw readers into its lived history. Haber's is a tale of survival through generations, of family love, and of the consequences it brings.

Like a €~non-fiction Suite Francaise', the author died shortly after completing this moving family memoir based on diaries and letters that her father brought out of Prague before the Holocaust.