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I am honored to be the guest editor of this special issue of the Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. It is devoted to the repercussions of the Holocaust which have followed us into the 21st century. In order to put this volume in context, I would like to offer a brief historical perspective and a personal note.
The history of psychoanalysis, the so-called “Jewish Science,” and the rise of Nazism are linked in a very personal way. Sigmund Freud arrived in London on June 6, 1938, less than three months after the Anschluss with Germany. It was an uncontested occupation which ushered the reign of terror into his beloved Vienna. Although even he was surprised at the vicious enthusiasm with which the Austrians embraced the Nazi cause, he was hesitant to leave. It was not until his daughter Anna was called to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation that Freud decided to let his influential friends like Princess Marie Bonaparte and Ernest Jones help him escape. The uncertainty over Anna's fate that day was signified by the fact that Max Schur, Freud's personal physician, supplied both she and her brother Martin with a lethal dose of medication were they to be detained, tortured, imprisoned, or worse. Only those in Freud's immediate family were eventually permitted to leave, so four of his aging sisters were left behind to suffer the deadly fate that befell two-thirds of European Jewry.
Freud's survivor guilt co-mingled with relief over the prospects of his escape, and perhaps it was a factor in a most risky statement he wrote prior to his celebrated departure. Because of his international fame and because of the sham of propriety still being promulgated by the Third Reich, Freud was required to sign an affidavit stating that he was not harmed or unfairly treated by the Gestapo. After so doing, he, in his inimitable style, sarcastically added,