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History is no stranger to human aggression, yet, the Holocaust (1940-1945), a magnum opus of deliberately planned destruction, defies comprehension. Historians, philosophers, and social scientists have tried to make sense of this disaster. Psychoanalysts, likewise, have contributed an impressive literature to an understanding of individual behavior and group dynamics during the Nazi tyranny and its aftermath (Bergmann, 1982; Kestenberg, 1980; Krystal, 1988; Niederland, ; Ostow, ; Pines, ).
Much has changed in the past sixty years. Individual survivors who previously maintained. an “epic silence” have begun to speak, to acknowledge the horrors, the trauma, and losses that they experienced. The world, albeit reluctantly, has acknowledged its crimes and denials of this catastrophic event. In spite of this change, we have a history of shattered lives among the survivors, and serious difficulties for their children (Yale Holocaust Video Archives; Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota). The question that we must address as psychoanalysts is by what diagnostic norms are we to judge a people so brutalized and traumatized by the social structure? How are we to understand the psychology of the survivors when the norms of a “good-enough” society no longer applied? How realistic an assessment can we make when the structure of their society, the organization of family life, and the moral value of human relationships disintegrated under the planned extermination by the Nazis (Wannsee Conference, 1942)?
There is a vast psychological literature on the subject of the