Caring for Aging Holocaust Survivors and Subsequent Generations

It is now more than 65 years since the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz. The Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored genocide of six million Jews, was a watershed event in modern human history and has challenged pre-existing ideas of the social, cultural, and psychological analysis of human behavior (Marcus & Wineman, 1985). Psychoanalysis has failed to address the transformational nature of this event. It has become clear, for example, that the analytic concepts of regression, identification with the aggressor, and survivor guilt are far too broad or simplistic to explain survivors' problems or guide their care. Equally significant, there has never been a group of genocide survivors who lived to this geriatric age, creating a situation for which professionals have limited experience.

Writing about “Caring for Aging Holocaust Survivors and Subsequent Generations” is a daunting task. The first problem one confronts is that the classification “Holocaust survivor” is extremely inexact. The term “survivor” in reference to the Holocaust broadly refers to any Jew threatened by the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. But the level and type of victimization and the terrors and atrocities experienced and witnessed vary from person to person. “Survivor” can refer to a person incarcerated within a concentration camp, confined to a ghetto, forced to work in a labor camp, or compelled to hide under a false identity. It can signify a refugee or a child sent away in the Kindertransport. Concentration camp