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This paper deals with the effect of persecution on children during the Holocaust. The psychic consequences discussed pertain to the Nazis' assault on the children's bodies, on their ego, their superego and their identity. A brief section summarises problems of psychotherapy for child survivors and the last part deals with the consequences of Nazi ideology on the superego of Germans.
Starvation and other forms of interference with the functioning of the body deplete narcissism and destroy the will to live. Ways of rekindling of narcissism and enhancing the will to live are discussed.
The effect of persecution on the ego is manifold. The restriction of space with the ensuing inability to move freely, the breaking down of the children's sense of gravity with the ensuing inability to stand up or stretch, the loss of the sense of time, all represented an infringement on basic ego functions, acquired during early development. Outstanding among their defences were numbing of affect, splitting and identification with the aggressor or frustrator. However, child survivors developed an amazing ability to adapt to new and stressful circumstances.
The effect of the lawlessness on the superego was especially difficult for young children and adolescents. Previously acquired rules had to be abandoned and a new set of rules had to be learned, rules which sanctified stealing as means of survival. Happily, after the return of adult guidance with their own ethical values restored, children and especially adolescents rebuilt their shattered and altered superego.
The most outstanding effect of persecution was the loss of one's identity, the loss of feeling of being worthwhile and an imposition of a new religion on hidden children, who had to disavow their Jewishness to survive.
The persecution of non-Jewish children differed from the assault on the Jewish children's identity. Jews were destined to die while others were either enslaved, made to conform or even chosen to be Germanized. Many Jewish children in hiding were raised in the spirit of Christian teachings which blamed the Jews for killing the Saviour. Treatment should aim at helping the Jewish child-survivors to regain confidence in their own memories and to raise their shattered self-esteem.
Lastly a short section deals with the way Nazis brought up their own children and distorted their superego. Grandiosity and taking advantage of the Jews to project their own guilt on them fostered lawlessness. It is suggested that the Nazis hated their own children whom they sent to war and killed when they were handicapped. This hatred was repressed and projected upon Jews. The Jews may have been chosen as scapegoats because they developed ethics which prohibited child sacrifice and thus rescued children from death, a tenet incompatible with an ideology that advocates child killing.