Elderly Children as Grown UPS: Child Survivors of the Holocaust

One does not escape the aftermath of the Holocaust. The Holocaust, or Shoah (the Hebrew word for “catastrophe”), remains in pursuit, sometimes hidden in the crevasses and recesses of memory, simply lurking and biding its time. Memories triggered by a thousand subtle reminders must be fought and suppressed, or “compartmentalized,” in order to allow “ordinary” life to unfold.

I know three of the four panelists: Dori Laub, Eva Metzger Brown, and Clem Loew. Memoirs of Eva's experiences and of Dori's are among the powerful first person accounts included in a recent book edited by Martin Glassner and myself (Glassner & Krell, 2006). Clem and I have participated as workshop facilitators at many Child Survivor gatherings since the groundbreaking 1991 New York Conference that saw 1600 people (the majority of whom were children who survived the Holocaust) meet for the first time. I do not personally know the fourth panelist, Sophia Richman, but I feel I know her. It is not difficult for one child survivor to connect to another, for we are cut from the same cloth of formative life experience within the broad strokes of a shared and massive childhood trauma.