The Lasting Trauma of the Holocaust

Anita Weisbord

“I do have certain dreams.  When it is very cold and snowy outside, and I’m comfortable in my [down comforter], I get the feeling of the people in the concentration camp, freezing.  And I, who’s so comfortable in bed.  I get those [visions] in my mind, at night.  You know?  When I’m nice and cozy and the wind is blowing outside and it’s snowy, that I do, those visions, those flashes of it.”  (emphasis added)

Boris Chartan

“As a young kid, probably the greatest trauma was as I walked the street one day, I think it was on a Sunday afternoon, when I saw these Ukrainian police—the first time that obviously I saw something like this—shoot four people right in the back of the head.  And I was no more than fifty feet away.  That was a real trauma.  Just to see the way it was done, the way they killed all of them… I ran right away the other way.  That was a tremendous trauma.  When I think back [on] it, it comes in…sometimes I see it.  Yeah, it’s very vivid…their names, their heights, the name of the German…the Ukrainian police are still with me, I mean I knew them.”  (emphasis added)