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I am roughly the same age now that my father was when he had his first child. The difference between us is that the Holocaust ripped him away from his family and forced him into a slave labor battalion, whereas I remain free to support my family in my chosen profession as a psychologist.
I have a desire to pass on to my infant son knowledge about the Holocaust in general and of his grandfather's experience of survivorhood in particular. Because this impulse in me is spontaneous, without reflection or conscious decision — a psychological given — I find it important to understand what I mean by it: just what it is I want to pass on, and why it seems to be a psychological imperative to do so.
In this desire to tell my son about the Holocaust, I share what seems to be a common desire to children of survivors. Of particular note is that in a broad and exhaustive study of children of survivors (Prince, 1985a), this desire was one of the few discrete traits held in common among children of survivors. Whereas dramatic differences exist in conscious identification or in self-attribution of importance to having been children of survivors, in personality styles, in preferred modes of interpersonal relationship, in relationships to parents, in Jewish identification, in attitudes, ideas, and beliefs in general and about the Holocaust in particular, children of survivors universally want to pass on knowledge of the Holocaust.