Understanding Resilience Through Their Eyes and Words:

The Varied Memories and Narratives of Individuals who Survived the Holocaust

Alison Stern Golub

Brown University

May 2000

Abstract

The Holocaust caused a colossal disruption in the lives of those who experienced it.  Survivors of the Holocaust have thus had many obstacles to overcome in their struggles to deal with their memories, to form cohesive identities, to create their own systems of meaning-making, and to construct a coherent life narrative.  This project explored these issues through the qualitative narrative analysis of personal interviews with 20 Jewish Holocaust survivors.  All of these subjects showed a tremendous ability to cope resiliently during and after their traumas, albeit in highly varied ways.

Introduction

            Lawrence Langer has referred to the present worlds of Holocaust survivors as “a life after ‘death’ called survival.”  William Niederland has characterized these survivors as “tortured souls,” “unfortunates,” and “totally miserable.”  There are countless studies showing the extent of the negative effects of the Holocaust and the scope of inabilities that survivors continue to exhibit.  Because of the emotional and psychological deficits that develop in an individual who has survived such severe trauma, it has been long hypothesized that Holocaust survivors are simply unable to heal, “move past” the trauma, and live without some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.  Some psychoanalysts have claimed that Holocaust survivors will never be able to live as fully functioning, psychologically healthy human beings.

Much of this was true directly after the Holocaust.  Some of it may even be true today.  However, it is not certain that these wholly negative reports are always accurate and it is most certain that they do not always offer the complete picture.

Indeed, the Holocaust caused a massive disruption in the lives of those who lived through it, whether they spent time in concentration camps, in death camps, in hiding, or were able to get out of Europe while it was still possible.  Because the Holocaust is notorious as an event that exposed the world (but more proximally, European Jews, Gypsies, and Poles) to the depths of inhumanity, these survivors are known to have lived through some of the worst conditions this world has seen.

Although it is true that the effects of their trauma are long lasting and pervasive, the following research shows that many Holocaust survivors have the will to regenerate themselves and live beyond their horrific pasts.  The resilient individual, while probably never able to fully “get over” a specific trauma or damaging experience, is able to achieve a level of peace and an acceptance of life’s events, whether positive or negative.  Many researchers have hypothesized that resilience is simply that height of psychological health that could not be expected in a severely traumatized person.  But on the other hand, viewed within the context of what they have experienced, what could be realistically “expected” of survivors of the Holocaust?

It could be argued that, because of the severity of the trauma and the depth of the psychological damage they experienced, Holocaust survivors may simply not be able to function at the normal “height” of mental health.  What is “normal” and what could be expected of trauma survivors is highly variable, depending on what has been experienced.  Thus, Holocaust survivors and their coping skills must be evaluated on a scale that exists within the context of their trauma, not outside of it.  This project attempts to do exactly that.  By utilizing techniques of qualitative narrative analysis, one is able to truly listen to the voices of these survivors, rather than simply evaluating and categorizing and comparing to other survivors of other traumas.  It is clear, after listening to these stories, that survivors of the Holocaust, while certainly affected by the traumas they have experienced, have coped rather elegantly and resiliently throughout their lives.

Methods

The main research question was centered around the processes of coping with trauma in general.  The project gradually metamorphosed into a more in-depth exploration of how these survivors are able to cope fifty years later than how they coped at the time of the trauma itself.  The interviews were semi-structured and unconstrained by time, and thus the average length of each was five hours, with a minimum of two hours and a maximum of over nine hours.

            The interview questions were organized around a number of principal themes.  First, we discussed their attributions regarding their survival—who or what they believe was responsible for their lives.  Second, we delved into the state of their religiosity after such a trauma—their belief or non-belief in God, and when and how this belief may have changed as a result or in the process of the trauma.  Third, we explored their feelings about “recovery,” or the level of acceptance of the trauma they had experienced, and their coping strategies in the psychological realm.

Fourth, there was an investigation into the identities and senses of self of these survivors—whether they viewed their personalities as having been altered by the Holocaust, and whether it impacted their identities as Jews, as people, as innocent human beings.  There were specific questions about where their identities as Holocaust survivors stood in relation to the other facets of their identities (for instance, as parents, children, spouses, employees, Jews).

Fifth, and closely related to the previous set, we talked about their relationships with their spouses and other family members, and the status of their work lives, and the impact of the trauma on those areas of their lives.  Sixth, we investigated whether they were experiencing or had experienced any psychological or physiological symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Seventh, the survivors were asked about their thoughts on resilience, trauma, and survivorship.  Finally, there were four general questions aimed at further understanding the survivors’ systems of meaning-making and the centrality of the Holocaust and its effects in their lives.  Below is a small sample of the questions utilized in the interviews.

·        What do you attribute your survival to?

(God, some innate “survival” quality in yourself, circumstance/luck)

·        Do you believe things happen for a reason?

·        Do you believe that people are basically good or basically evil?

·        Do you believe you have “recovered,” or gained some level of acceptance of the trauma you experienced?

·        Or do you believe that you will always have a part of you that will never recover—that you will always deal with the effects of the Holocaust?

·        How big of a part of your identity do you think the Holocaust is?

·        How do you think your experiences in the Holocaust have affected your sense of self and your identity?

·        What about you today is the same as how you were fifty years ago?

·        If you could picture yourself today, minus your experiences in the Holocaust, would you be able to recognize yourself?  How?

·        Put these facets of your identity in order from most to least prominent – man/woman, husband/wife, father/mother, Jewish, survivor, elderly, employee, etc.

·        How has the Holocaust affected your Jewish identity, your relationships, and your work life today?

·        As a rough estimate, how often do you think about your experiences in the Holocaust?

·        If you could forget all about your experiences, and erase all traumatic memories from your mind, would you?

·        What were the most memorable events in your life?

·        Of all of your accomplishments, what are you the most proud of?

Subject Demographics and Discussion of Interview Process

            Statistically, this group of survivors was a rather accurate representation of the general Holocaust survivor population, especially that in America today.  Thirteen of the subjects were male; seven female.  Eight of them were originally from Poland; six from Germany; two from Austria; and one each from Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Lithuania.

There is a near-perfect bell curve as far as ages of the subject pool at the time of the interviews, with a range from 65 to 83 and the highest concentration of ages between 70 and 74.  Two of the subjects were interviewed in Jewish community centers in Providence, Rhode Island; five were interviewed in their homes in either Rhode Island or New York; eleven interviews took place at the Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of Nassau County in Long Island, New York; and two were conducted at Queensborough Community College in New York.

The majority of the subjects had spent time in at least one concentration or death camp.  Approximately half of them had been in at least three camps, and one survivor had been in seven different camps.  Of the subjects who had not been in camps, three had spent time in ghettos and three spent the war years attempting to escape Nazi rule.  All of the subjects have subsequently been married, and only one has been divorced.  All have had at least one child, and the majority have two.  All have worked for at least some part of their lives, and many are still gainfully employed, in addition to volunteer work and frequent Holocaust-related speaking events.

Each formal interview began with a request for the subject to tell his or her “story.”  I deliberately made my inquiry open-ended, and emphasized that there were no time constraints and that I was interested in everything they wanted to tell me, not just their “Holocaust story.”  This segment of the interviews was generally unstructured.  However, nearly every interview followed the same general course.  After the “Holocaust narrative” had been concluded, there was a pause after which the interview took an abrupt turn.  While the first part had consisted of a fluid and almost scripted narrative and generally required little to no questioning on my part, the next section shifted into repeated questioning and prodding in response to short (if any) answers.

Very rarely would any of the subjects end their narratives of their experiences during the war and then spontaneously continue with an account of their lives afterwards.  More often than not, they would need prompting to enter this next narrative (i.e., “And what happened after that?”), and frequently, they would seem to require even more strenuous persuasion.  There was a clear tendency on the parts of the participants to assume that anything after liberation or the end of the war was not interesting and thus, not worth telling.  When I would ask them to continue, I would most often be greeted with expressions of surprise and comments like, “Why do you want to hear about that?” or “I just told you the most interesting part.”  Even though I took pains to assure each survivor that I was (especially) interested in his or her life after the war and that I did want to hear about it, very few of them ever gave me a cohesive narrative of this part of their lives.

            Although the war encompassed only a very small segment of each individual’s life, it generally was the subject of at least three-fourths of his or her life narrative.  The entire fifty years after the Holocaust was often condensed into less than twenty minutes of the interview, while the war story (spanning less than ten years of their lives) could take up as much as three hours.  And as much as I pushed and questioned and encouraged, it was rare to be presented with post-war narratives of the scope and length that characterized the Holocaust narratives of the participants.  While I had expected some amount of hesitance in response to my questioning about post-Holocaust experiences, I was continually surprised at the consistent brevity and almost total lack of detail that typified these responses.  This was a crucial issue within the project, and one that will be discussed further.

Discussion

These 20 Holocaust survivors displayed evidence of incredible abilities, strengths, and resilience in their lives and throughout their discussions of their life narratives.  However, it was clear that the Holocaust caused a dramatic disruption in three distinct facets of their current lives and understandings of themselves.

First, the Holocaust caused an irreparable rupture in the memories of these survivors.  Whether the participants tended to remember a great deal of their experiences or very little, their Holocaust memories often stood in stark contrast with their memories of the events in their lives before and after the war.  The Holocaust thus fundamentally split a potentially fluid life narrative into specific and disconnected sections encompassing “life before the war,” “the Holocaust,” and “life after the war.”  The structure of memory is different for these different segments, and the processes and effects of remembering are equally divergent.

          Second, the Holocaust represents a fundamental obstacle for these survivors in their attempts to build coherence out of their lives and life narratives.  Because it never “goes away,” the tendency to compartmentalize experiences and gradually move them out of direct consciousness is thwarted.  Many of the subjects showed evidence of disrupted coping strategies both during and after the war, and an often intense need for stability and protection.  The life narratives of most Holocaust survivors show this lack of cohesion and inability to integrate their wartime experiences with their lives before and afterwards.  The Holocaust simply sticks out of these survivors’ lives and senses of self “like a sore thumb,” rearranging everything around it to allow for its centrality.

Finally, the Holocaust, and their memories of the Holocaust, became the focal point for these survivors’ identities.  Many of their present views of themselves revolve around their identities as Holocaust survivors, and their perceived value to themselves and to the world seem directly correlated to their survivor status.  This can also be seen in the fact that the majority of these individuals’ narratives of their lives after the war were disjointed, abbreviated, and treated as inferior in quality and importance next to their Holocaust narratives.

Holocaust survivors are valued for their Holocaust stories, and thus, place an inordinate amount of their self-worth and identity on their status as survivors.  When survivors are asked to speak at schools or for other types of audiences, they are asked to speak about their experiences during the Holocaust, and not about their lives afterwards or their lives in general.

           While it is obvious that survivors are validated by the general public only as far as their survivorship, it could be assumed that this only extends to their “public” narratives, in a sense.  One would hope that they could separate what the world thought was interesting about them from what they thought was interesting about themselves – and that they would have both a public and private narrative.  As an interviewer, I had assumed that if I pushed and prodded enough, and assured them that I was interested in things beyond the Holocaust, that I would be able to push through that wall and access their private narratives.  However, what I found out, through one of my subjects, is that this is not possible.

            It is not simply that these survivors did not want to tell the narratives of their post-war life.  It is that many of them never constructed one.  In reality, they have internalized the public’s view of them – because the public does not find anything beyond the Holocaust interesting, the survivors do not either.  And thus, there was no private narrative to be accessed.  Because no one seems to care about their lives after the war (and certainly because no one has asked them about it), they have never bothered to construct a cohesive story about it.  Thus, unfortunately, many of these survivors seem to have conformed to the world’s expectations personally as well as publicly, to the extent that their identities have become, in large part, a mere reflection of their value to the outside world.

Dan Bar-On has written, in Fear and Hope:  Three Generations of the Holocaust (1995),

“Biographical reconstruction is not a random process.  The choices people make in telling their life story reflect the choices they make, consciously or unconsciously, in their lives.”

We tell stories for a reason.

We construct and tell our narratives carefully and knowledgeably.

When analyzing a narrative, one must pay as much, if not more,

attention to what is not told in a narrative as to what is told.

One must also remember that the form of a narrative is just as important as its content.

These individuals had reasons for telling their stories, and for telling them the way they did:

1)      Because what they told held meaning for them and held meaning in their life narratives.

2)      Because they think what they told was important to tell, and important for others to know.

3)      Because they remember, or because they think they should remember, or because they don’t remember.

4)      Because what they told has persisted in their lives, and/or because it still impacts them today.

5)      Because they wanted to present an argument or a picture of themselves.

6)      Because they believe the world does or does not want to hear what they have to say.