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Holocaust Reaction Paper

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such as the Holocaust involve strain, shock, and trauma, with both group and individual traumatization.3 After traumatic events such as the Holocaust occur, emotional responses such as shock and denial are common among survivors. As Leys describes, trauma is defined as an individuals experience of “hypnotic imitation and identification that disables the victim’s perceptual and cognitive apparatus to such an extent that the experience never becomes part of the ordinary memory system.”4 While experience unpredictable emotions, mental and physical symptoms, as well as flashbacks are common among survivors, many struggle with overcoming these feelings after catastrophes such as the Holocaust take place. While survivors and the family of victims …show more content…

How does it transfer across generations? In the same way heat, light, and electricity is able to be transferred from a transmitter to a receiver, “it is also possible that unconscious experiences can also be transmitted from parents to their children through some complex process of extrasensory communication.”8 Both clinicians and researchers have been interested in looking at children of Holocaust survivors since they were born and how the traumatic memories and experiences from the Holocaust have affected the children as well. A child of a survivor states, “The hard part is knowing the pain and grief they have gone through. Certainly that affects why I am the way I am and how I think and who I am. I think life was more difficult for them and hence why it was difficult for me.9 Studies suggest that the transmission of trauma “has been assumed to contain some kind of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suggesting that since many Holocaust survivors suffer from PTSD, their offspring will also suffer from such a syndrome.”10 Although children of Holocaust survivors have not experienced the Holocaust, studies reveal that go through traumatic after effects such as phobia, depression, and fear.11 Research shows that the experiences survivors endured also effect the children of Holocaust survivors as they too become traumatized from their parents experiences. Studies suggest that the transmission of trauma or “Such a direct “transposition” of trauma was thought to have been inherited, absorbed, or contracted by the child, as if they persecution complex of the parents was contagious, infecting offspring across generational lines.”12 When children of survivors mirror the disordered behaviors of their parents, there is a direction “transposition” as Kellermann describes, such as depression or PTSD from survivor parents to their children. Hirsch’s book, Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust reveals

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