BETWEEN RECEPTION AND SELF-PERCEPTION: TESTIMONIES OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN ISRAEL

Based on survivors’ testimonies the article discusses the encounters of Holocaust survivors in Palestine/Israel between 1945 and 1955. After addressing the issues of the historiography of these Holocaust survivors and the value of using their testimonies, it examines the interactions of survivors with official authorities: work, housing, kibbutzim, education, and the pre-military/IDF. It sheds light on the meaning of silence and the manifestation of stereotyping for the survivors themselves, and it assesses the impact of families and creating families. The article also examines the validity of these testimonies by studying some testimonies of Holocaust survivors who emigrated from Israel and those who immigrated directly from Europe to North America. The study concludes that although contemporary collective views influenced survivors’ perceptions, cases of their ill-treatment were not isolated. They were more the result of the attitudes of individuals than the policy of the state. Veteran Israelis' insensitivity affected survivors. Stigmatizing ostracized them. Lack of empathy and discrimination caused survivors to feel unwanted and lonely, which resulted in many volunteering for the military, or in self-isolation, or in getting married as quickly as possible. Lack of study and job opportunities for women were more difficult to overcome.     

MY FATHER,MYSELF

This essay presents material from the second analysis of an offspring of two Holocaust survivors, each of whom lost a child during the war. The first analysis (Kogan 2003 ) focused primarily on the patient's relationship with her mother. This second analysis revolves around the elaboration of the complex and painful father–daughter relationship, centering on the events surrounding the death of the patient's father. The discussion includes an exploration of the father's deferred action on account of his Holocaust trauma, which he passed on to the next generation; the break in the idealized paternal representation; and the daughter's identification with her father's disavowed aggressive aspects. It also examines some of the unique transference and countertransference problems that arose, mainly because patient and analyst belonged to the same traumatized large group.     

Testimonies in the Treatment of Genocidal Trauma

This article describes an approach to the treatment of genocide survivors that addresses both the personal and communal/historical dimensions of their experiences. I begin by outlining the characteristics of massive psychic trauma as background for using video testimonies in the treatment of Holocaust survivors. I then discuss videotaped interviews with perpetrators as an illustrative contrast to survivors' testimonies. The third section explains my position as a psychoanalyst encountering historical trauma and its relationship to my own experiences as a survivor. Following a brief history of videotaping as a medium for recording testimonies, I conclude by demonstrating the ways in which active listening can lead to the revelation of new dimensions of historical as well as personal truth.     

PROFESSIONALIZING SURVIVAL: THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC MEMORY AMONG HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR-EDUCATORS IN MONTREAL

The majority of Holocaust survivors never speak publicly about their experiences, but those who do tend to find themselves at the centre of commemorative work in their communities. As Holocaust scholars, Holocaust education institutions, and members of the general public become increasingly interested in how to ethically universalize the lessons of the Holocaust, the public Holocaust survivor's role has broadened. It is no longer enough to recount one's own experience; survivors are expected to speak to current human rights abuses and genocides.In Montreal, Canada, a city which once claimed the third largest survivor population in the world, public survivors do a great deal of work. They give testimony in schools and at commemorative events, organize book clubs, write plays, direct films, teach, act as museum docents, and assume roles as community spokespeople. Given their dedication to this work, and a push to get them to speak beyond their personal experiences, we argue that there is a major shift taking place: the act of giving public Holocaust testimony is being professionalized. This professionalization raises unique questions about how people who lived through the Holocaust conceptualize themselves and their identities as survivors. By treating testimony as professional work, survivors contemplate, on a daily basis and in an applied manner, their stances on big questions regarding hierarchies of suffering, comparability, the connection between the personal and the political, blame and forgiveness, as well as many other relevant themes that are central to Holocaust and memory scholarship. All of this plays out in their testimonies.     

The Holocaust after 70 years: Holocaust survivors in the United States

Over 70 years, there have been different narratives of the Holocaust survivors coming to the United States. Survivors’ stories begin with an event of major historical significance. Difficulties in conceptualizing historical trauma, along with common distortions and myths about Holocaust survivors and their children are examined. This article proposes that it is impossible to discuss the consequences of extreme suffering without consideration of historical meaning and social context with which they are entwined. The evolution of the social representation of the Holocaust and the contradictions in clinical attributions to survivors and their children with consideration of the future is described. Attributions to survivors and their children with consideration of the future is described.     

Mother–child and father–child mutuality in two contexts: consequences for young children's peer relationships

This study examines the role that context plays in links between relative balance, or mutuality in parent–child interaction and children's social competence. Sixty‐three toddlers and their parents were observed in a laboratory play session and caregiving activity (i.e. eating snack). Mutuality was operationalised as the relative balance in (a) partners' compliance to initiations, and (b) partners' expression of positive emotion. Caregivers rated children's social competence with peers, and children's prosocial and aggressive behaviour with peers was observed in their childcare arrangement. Contextual differences were observed in the manifestation of parent–child mutuality, with both mother–child and father–child dyads displaying higher mutual compliance scores in the play context than in the caregiving context. Father–child dyads also displayed higher levels of shared positive emotion during play than during the caregiving context. There were no differences in a way that parent–child mutuality during play and caregiving was associated with children's social competence with peers. Overall, the results suggest that parent–child mutuality is a quality of parent–child interaction that has consistent links to children's peer competence regardless of the context in which it occurs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The collective past,group psychology and personal narrative: Shaping Jewish identity by memoirs of the Holocaust

Through honing its collective memory, especially after the Holocaust, the Jewish community has attempted to sustain its culture, bolster the Jewish identity of its members, and regain a resolute sense that its narrative is again proceeding. To some degree, all these aims are realized by instilling in its members the Jewish modal character structure: a psychological configuration with two contrastable entities. One chronically discomposed self-structure, defining itself as polluted and helpless, trembles with the appalling imagery of historical and imminent community disasters. The other entity believes in its unmatched capacity for reparative, socially beneficial actions. The paradigm of this psychological organization is found in many children of survivors. The memory of a tragic history abides alongside the community's hopes in the Jewish modal personality. The need to set forth and accommodate these two motifs imprints upon the Jewish "national" character many of its distinctive qualities. The designs of the Jewish community for this particularly Jewish twofold personality formation are augmented by the personal revelations of survivors. Therefore, Holocaustic testimonies are invested with a sacred aura. In measure, these recitals of the disaster with their stark images, plus the clashing affects aroused in the reader toward main characters of the narrative, dictate the way Jews define themselves in the world and the way they live. A confluence of being covertly commissioned by the Jewish community joins with the narrators' more idiosyncratic longings. Together they generate a steady stream of Holocaustic accounts. Complementary vectors drive the reader to peruse these records. The results therefrom, intimate knowledge of the disaster, plus the twofold personality motifs stamp many Jews as scions of the Holocaust.     

Enfants juifs cachés (1940-1944) : une littérature récente

The psychological literature about child survivors of the Holocaust, including “hidden children”, is recent and essentially American and Israeli. Trauma of child survivors of the Holocaust has been recognized in the 1980s. First articles have been published in the United States and Israel. All the clinicians identify traumatic symptomatology. The diagnosis of PTSD is questioned. Literature about “hidden children” has been written after 1991. After recognition of their suffering, articles and books emerged, especially American and Israeli studies. In Europe, only a few articles come out, they are mostly from Netherlands. This article presents a review of the psychological literature, predominantly American and Israeli concerning child survivors of the Holocaust and “hidden children” according to qualitative and quantitative methodology. Recently, a few researches start coming out and are published in French journals.     

Mental context reinstatement or drawing: Which better enhances children's recall of witnessed events and protects against suggestive questions?

The aim of this experiment was to examine the effectiveness of two techniques in enhancing children's recall of an event that they experienced approximately a week earlier. Younger (5–6 years) and older (8–9 years) children were interviewed about a magic show event in one of three conditions. Before recalling the event, some children were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the event (MCR group), others were asked to draw the context of the event (DCR group), and others received no reinstatement instructions (NCR). Results showed that these instructions had no impact on children's free recall or responses to open‐ended prompts. However, reinstatement instructions impacted children's responses to suggestive questions: those in the DCR group gave more accurate responses than those in the NCR group. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of drawing as a potentially protective exercise that lessens the impact of biased questions with child witnesses.     

In‐court versus out‐of‐court testimonies: Children's experiences and adults' assessments

The study examined the effects of different presentation modes on child witnesses' experiences and adults' perception and assessments of the same witnesses. Child witnesses (N = 108) were interviewed about an event that they had either experienced or imagined. Adult mock jurors (N = 240) watched the children's testimonies live, via two‐way closed‐circuit television (CCTV), or via a pre‐recorded video. The results showed that the live observers perceived the children in more positive terms than did the two‐way CCTV observers, who in turn perceived the children in more positive terms than did the video observers. Briefly, it seems as the more proximal the presentation mode, the more positive the observers' perception. Somewhat in contrast to these results, a significantly smaller proportion of the children who testified on video stated that they were nervous, compared to the children who testified live or via two‐way CCTV. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

College Students' Attitudes Toward Children's Nurturance and Self‐Determination Rights1

Increasing attention is being paid to children's rights issues in policy and law. However, there is little recent research examining adults’ attitudes toward children's rights. This is an important question given that children's rights are unlikely to be fulfilled if they are not supported by the adults involved in their lives. Attitudes toward nurturance and self‐determination rights were examined in 461 undergraduate students from the United States and Canada. Students were asked to think of a “target child” (8, 10, 12, 14, or 16 years) when answering the questions. Students strongly endorsed nurturance rights, but were generally unsupportive of children's rights to self‐determination. Canadians showed greater support for self‐determination than did Americans. In both groups, endorsement increased significantly with the age of the target child. Commenting on factors they considered when responding to the items, participants perceived children's rights as dependent on personal, interpersonal, and societal factors.     

Asymmetrical consequences of behavioral change through reward and punishment

Previous research (Greitemeyer & Weiner, 2003 ) has demonstrated that compliance, because of an anticipated reward is attributed more to the person than compliance because of an anticipated punishment. The present research extended these findings to an educational context. Three studies revealed that parents who ask their children to change inappropriate behaviors are more likely to ascribe their children's improvement to the child, if the child was promised a reward, rather than threatened, to receive a punishment if the child did not improve. Moreover, because a child's improved behavior is more likely to be ascribed to the child given a reward as compared to a punishment, parents expect that rewards (as opposed to punishments) are more likely to sustain improved behavior, when the incentive is no longer offered. Finally, participants report to be more likely to induce behavioral change through reward rather than punishment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Responsive Parenting in the Second Year: Specific Influences on Children's Language and Play

In two longitudinal studies, relations between dimensions of maternal responsiveness at 13 months and children's language and play abilities at 13 and at 20 months were examined. We characterized mothers' responsive exchanges by assessing the targets of maternal responses (i.e. what child activities mothers respond to) and the verbal contents of maternal responses (i.e. what mothers said when they responded), and we asked whether subtypes of responsiveness would relate differentially to children's language and play abilities. In general, maternal responsiveness to children's vocalizations predicted children's language, and maternal responses to children's play predicted children's play. These findings suggest that maternal responsiveness can be profitably categorized into subtypes that relate to domains of child outcomes in specialized ways. The specific nature of mother–child associations in the domains of early language and play is discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Bonds that Remind Us: Maternal Reminiscing for Bonding Purposes in Relation to Children's Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance

The present study investigated the relation between characteristics of mother–child reminiscing and children's perceived competence and social acceptance. We focused specifically on conversations for bonding purposes (i.e., conversations that serve the function of maintaining or strengthening the relationship between the child and the mother) as bonding may be a particularly salient context for the development of self‐views. Fifty‐two mothers and their 4‐year‐old children engaged in a past‐talk conversation where mothers were instructed to try to bond with their children. Children's perceived cognitive and physical competence and maternal and peer acceptance, along with language, were measured. Our results indicated that characteristics of maternal talk, particularly maternal support of child's autonomy and child‐centred content, were strongly related to children's perceived social acceptance. Although weaker, there were also associations between maternal talk and children's perceived competence. Results are discussed in light of theories arguing in favour of parent–child discourse as a mechanism for self‐development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal beliefs concerning young children's private speech

The goal of this study was to understand maternal reports, beliefs, and attitudes about their young children's use of private speech. Mothers of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 5 participated in a semi‐structured interview in which they reported on the frequency and context of their child's use of private speech, maternal responses toward such speech use in children, and beliefs about the utility of such speech for children. Interviews were transcribed and responses coded. Mothers also completed surveys on children's self control and parenting style. Results indicated that practically all parents reported that their child engaged in private speech and that such speech was more likely to appear during fantasy play than during problem‐solving activities. Parents varied in their personal responses to children's self talk and, as a group, do not appear to actively discourage or encourage its use. Ignoring/allowing child private speech use was common and this response was positively associated with authoritative parenting. Parental reports of the frequency with which their child talks to himself were negatively associated with parental reports of children's self‐control. Crib speech, or bedtime monologue, was reported to be very common and was negatively associated with children's self‐control and positively associated with children's private speech use. Parents were uniformly positive in their belief that private speech serves important functions and that it helps young children during task activities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parental facilitation of children's preparatory play behavior in a stressful situation

Parental behavior has often been cited as a crucial factor in children's ability to cope with stress. However, there has been little study of ways parents help their children adjust to stressful life events. In the present study, 34 parents and children (ages 4–9) were observed preparing for a stressful life event (elective surgery). Parents were asked to prepare their children for the upcoming stress and were given stress-related hospital equipment to use with their child. Specific hypotheses were selected to study the relationships of five parent helping behaviors to children's active preparatory play with stress-relevant materials. Children's preparatory play alone and with an examiner were also observed to test for effects of children on their parents' helping behavior. As expected, parent helping behaviors were significantly related to children's active preparatory play. With the exception of highly directive behavior, however, the relationship of parent helping behavior to child play was dependent on the child's age. This study suggests the importance of further investigating parental involvement in studying the process of children's coping with stress.     

Transformation of Perception of Trauma by Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Group Therapy

Intensive work with child survivors of the Holocaust has made us aware of the clinical importance of understanding the ways children perceive their traumas and the conclusions they draw about how they must live their lives. When these perceptions are transformed congruently with the child's development, the survivors can cope quite well. In this paper we refer to now middle-aged survivors who are still guided by their child perceptions. We will describe how we have used conjoint group psychotherapy to facilitate processes of transformation even at this late stage. The model we provide for trauma work with Holocaust survivors whose traumatization occurred decades ago may well provide tools to reduce future suffering of children who are victims of massive traumatization today.