Psychotherapists' Participation in the Conspiracy of Silence About the Holocaust1

At the risk of offending, it must be emphasized that the victim suffered more … profoundly from the indifference of the onlookers than from the brutality of the executioner. The cruelty of the enemy would have been incapable of breaking the prisoner; it was the silence of those he believed to be his friends—cruelty more cowardly, more subtle—which broke his heart.

There was no longer anyone on whom to count … It … poisoned the desire to live… If this is the human society we come from—and are now abandoned by—why seek to return?

In 1930 [1929] Freud wrote,

No matter how much we may shrink with horror from certain situations—of a galley-slave in antiquity, … of a victim of the Holy Inquisition, of a Jew awaiting a pogrom—it is nevertheless impossible for us to feel our way into such people—to divine the changes which original obtuseness of mind, a gradual stupefying process, the cessation of expectations, … have produced

1. A preliminary thematic overview based on part of the data for this systematic study was published elsewhere (Danieli, 1980).

   Requests for reprints should be sent to Yael Danieli, Ph.D., Director, Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children, 345 East 80th St. (31–J), New York, N.Y., 10021.

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upon their receptivity to sensations of pleasure and unpleasure. Moreover, in the case of the most extreme possibility of suffering, special mental protective devices are brought into operation. It seems to me unprofitable to pursue this aspect of the problem any further. (p. 89) (Italics author's)

Although this passage was written before the Nazi Holocaust it poignantly foreshadowed psychotherapists' participation in the conspiracy of silence that has existed between mental health professionals and Nazi Holocaust survivors and their children. This conspiracy of silence is not confined to psychotherapists but is part of the conspiracy of silence that has characterized the interaction between survivors and society at large since the