Transmission of Holocaust Trauma

Transmission of Holocaust Trauma Much has been written about how children of Holocaust survivors tend to absorb some of the psychological burdens of their parents. But many questions remain to be answered regarding such parental transmission of Holocaust trauma. What was in fact passed on from parent to child? How does the transmission occur? Do parents invariably transmit and are children equally susceptible? The purpose of the present paper is to further discuss these issues and present a model in which the process of trauma transmission can be understood more consistently. After a brief description of that which was transmitted, a model is presented of the four prevalent theories of trauma transmission, including the (1) psycho-dynamic; (2) socio-cultural; (3) family system; and (4) biological points of view. Thereafter, an integrative view is suggested that takes into account the interplay among different levels of transgenerational influence, suggesting that transmission is caused by multiple factors, including biological predisposition, individual developmental history, family influences and social situation. In conclusion, some of the mitigating and aggravating factors are presented that are assumed to decrease and to increase the risk of children to absorb the trauma of their parents and to develop specific second-generation psychopathology as a result. Transmission of Holocaust Trauma During the course of psychotherapy, a man reports fragments of dreams: “I am hiding in the cellar from soldiers who are searching for me. Overwhelmed by anxiety, I know that if they find me they will kill me on the spot. Then, I am standing in line for selection; the smell of burning flesh is in the air and I can hear shots fired. Faceless and undernourished people with striped uniforms march away to the crematoriums. Then, I am in a pit full of dead, skeletal bodies. I struggle desperately to bury the cadavers in the mud, but limbs keep sticking up from the wet soil and keep floating up to the surface. I feel guilty for what has happened, though I do not know why. I wake up in a sweat and immediately remember that these were the kinds of nightmares I had ever since I was a child. During a lifelong journey of mourning, I have been travelling back to the dead; to the corpses and graveyards of the Second World War with a prevailing sense of numb grief for all those anonymously gone. ” From the content of this dream, the man could have been a Holocaust survivor. But he was not. He was the child of a survivor. His mother had survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. But he, himself, was born long after the war had ended in a country far removed from the horrors of the Holocaust. Why was he dreaming such dreams about half a century after the war? Why are children of Holocaust survivors still experiencing the effects of the Holocaust as if they themselves had actually been there? How do we explain that the so-called “second generation” seems to share the grief and terror of their traumatized parents? Was the trauma of the parents somehow transmitted to them? The observation that the psychological burdens of Holocaust survivors have been thus passed on to their children is not a new one. Over a period of three decades, more than 400 papers have been published on the transmission of trauma from Holocaust survivor parents to their offspring (Kellermann, 1999a). Despite this vast literature, however, several questions remain to be answered about this complex process of transmission of Holocaust trauma. What was in fact passed on from parent to child? How does the transmission occur? What is the relationship between parental psychopathology and mental distress in the children? Do parents invariably and inevitably transmit and are children equally susceptible? The purpose of the present paper is to further discuss these issues and present a model in which they can be viewed more consistently. Transmission Terminology. A review of the literature suggests that there are a multitude of different terms that describe trauma transmission. Regarding the term “transmission,” Albeck (1993) suggested that we talk about "intergenerational aspects of trauma" instead of trauma "transmission” and the concept was changed accordingly within the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies in the early 1990's. Despite this, I feel “transmission” is a useful and adequate concept and I have therefore retained it here. In addition, concepts such as “secondary” and “vicarious” traumatization have been suggested in order to differentiate this phenomenon from the “primary” and “direct” traumatization of the first generation. But such transmission includes also the effect on spouses and caretakers. Emphasizing the generational interchange specifically from parent to child, the transmission process is delineated as either trans-generational (e.g. Felsen, 1998); inter-generational (e.g. Sigal & Weinfeld, 1987); multigenerational (e.g. Danieli, 1998); or cross-generational (e.g. Lowin, 1983). However, since the trauma was invariably passed on from one or both of the parents, “parental” transmission would perhaps be the most adequate term (Dasberg, 2000). Earlier literature on the transmission of Holocaust trauma (e.g. Schwartz, Dohrenwend & Levav, 1994; Felsen, 1998) have further differentiated between on the one hand "direct and specific" transmission (a mental syndrome in the survivor parent leads directly to the same specific syndrome in the child) and on the other hand "indirect and general" transmission (a disorder in the parent makes the parent unable to function as a parent which indirectly leads to a general sense of deprivation in the child). While such a differentiation seems to be valid, it confuses aspects of the process of transmission, which are more or less "overt and covert," "manifest and tacit," and "conscious and unconscious. " It further fails to clearly separate the aetiology (or assumed cause) of the transmission from the manifestation (or assumed effect) of the transmission. There is as yet no consensus as to how to define the field, some focusing on its descriptive meaning whereas others include possible explanations of its aetiology. In order to limit such ambiguity, I will differentiate between the process of transmission (how the trauma was carried over from one generation to the next), and the content of transmission (what was in fact transmitted) (Levine, 1982). The first would contain the assumed cause of transmission, in terms of what parents did to their children, and the second would contain the effect, in terms of the psychological responses of the child. While both perspectives apparently involve direct and indirect (as well as specific and general) aspects, the basic differentiation of parental influence and infant/child response is essential for making sense of the various theories and research findings within this field. The underlying model for the parental transmission of Holocaust trauma may thus be characterised as a functional relationship, in which the behavior of children of survivors (B) is a function (f) of Holocaust survivor parents' childrearing behavior (P), leading to the formula: B = f (P). However, there is seldom a clear and simple linear connection between P and B. As Prince (1985), pointed out, The mechanism of second generation effects is seen as an extremely complex one in which cumulative trauma of parental communication, the aspect of the parent-child relationship determined by the Holocaust context, and the historical imagery provided by the parent and by other cultural processes are mediated by interaction with normative developmental conflicts, family dynamics independent of the Holocaust, variables of social class, culture, Jewish heritage, and immigrant status (p. 27). The above simple paradigm therefore needs to be expanded to include various psychological responses of children of survivors (B1, B2, B3, etc.) to a variety of parental factors influencing the process of transmission (P1, P2, P3, etc.) under different circumstances (C1, C2, C3, etc.). In such an expanded model, the simple question: "Are children of Holocaust survivor parents affected by their parents? " is replaced by the more elaborate and appropriate question: "Which kinds of Holocaust survivor parents influence which kinds of children in which ways under which circumstances? " This functional relation may be described by the following formula: 2 Gen. B1, B2, B3, etc. = f (Parental P1, P2, P3, etc.) + (C1, C2, C3, etc.) and it is illustrated in Figure 1.