Transmission of Holocaust trauma still affects adult children caring for parents
by the Belgian collaborator and SS officer Leon Degrelle. The books glorify Nazism and deny the Holocaust.
The plaintiffs are all in their 80s and include a former fighter of the Polish Home Army and Warsaw Uprising, and two Holocaust survivors, both saved from the Warsaw Ghetto as children and whose family members were murdered by the Nazis.
They are being represented by the Warsaw office of the global legal firm Dentons, which conducts pro bono public interest litigation, and supported by the Lawfare Project, a US-based legal think tank and litigation fund that files cases against antisemitic discrimination around the world.
The plaintiffs have filed a civil action, arguing that the publisher violates their personal rights, including their dignity, their national and historical heritage, their sense of national identity, their right to the memory of the historical truth and their right to respect for their own extreme experiences involving immediate danger to their lives.
The lawsuit demands that the publisher stop selling and distributing both of the books by Degrelle. In addition, the plaintiffs want Ryba and Katmar to publish apologies in the Polish press and pay sums of 40,000 zlotys to charity.
Their attorney, Wojciech Kozlowsk, said: “This is the first civil case of its kind ever brought in Poland. Although promotion of Nazism and Holocaust denial is a criminal offence in Poland and in theory prosecutable in the criminal courts, in practice the public prosecutor fails to act effectively in the majority of cases.”
One of the plaintiffs remarked: “The motivation behind my involvement in this case is to protect historical truth about Nazi crimes and to pass this truth on to the young generations of Poles.”
Lawfare Project director Brooke Goldstein said: “These three brave Polish citizens are heroes. Their harrowing testimonies are a reminder of the unimaginable horror of the Nazis. Despite their age and the trauma of their experiences, it is humbling to see their courage in standing up for the truth.”
The Lawfare Project also charges that the books are virulently anti-Polish.
Quotes from the books, provided by the Lawfare Project, include:
“The tragedy of World War II has been monopolized by a pro-Zionist lobby to become the tragedy of Jews only. This is a historical falsehood designed for financial gain. True, there is no controversy that some Jews did suffer in this great fire, which by the way was caused by their own leaders. But playing up that suffering is so out of proportion as to ultimately become harmful to the interests it is designed to serve.”
“Such as in the case of gas chambers in which, if we should believe in the numbers quoted by the accusers, the victims would have had to be crowded twenty two people per square meter for twenty four hours a day; or in the case of the crematorium descriptions served up to us, where the furnaces would have to continue working fulltime in 2050 or even 2080 to burn all those bodies claimed by the Jewish propaganda.”
“After 1945, Hitler was accused of every possible atrocity, but being cruel was not in his nature. He loved children. For him, it was an entirely natural reaction to stop his car and share his packed lunch with young bikers on the road. One day he gave his cloak to a homeless person struggling in the rain. He used to make a break during work at midnight to prepare food for his dog, Blondi. If he did not like cats, it was only because cats hunted birds.”
Although more than seven decades have passed since the end of World War II, Bar-Ilan University researchers still detect signs of trauma passed from aging Holocaust survivors to their adult children who take care of them.
Even now, researchers argue whether intergenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma indeed exists. Some claim that offspring of Holocaust survivors demonstrate impressive resilience and do not differ in major health markers (such as symptoms of depression and anxiety) from those whose parents did not experience the Holocaust. But other researchers insist that survivors’ suffering has passed from one generation to another, thus affecting their children and other relatives.
In an attempt to bridge these contrasting views, another theory suggests that the offspring of survivors are generally resilient, yet their vulnerability is exposed when they are coping with continuous stress.
With the third theory in mind, the BIU researchers conducted a three-part study examining the way in which adult offspring of survivors deal with stress related to serving as caregivers to their elderly parents. Their findings were recently published in the journal Aging & Mental Health in a study entitled “Filial anxiety and sense of obligation among offspring of Holocaust survivors.”
They first carried out intensive interviews with ten adult children of survivors who serve as caregivers to their parents. The offspring shared their concerns and worries regarding their parents’ condition, and emphasized their desire to protect their parents from additional suffering. They also mentioned the unique difficulties involved in caring for traumatized parents, such as their resistance to being treated by Jewish physicians who have German names.
In the second study, they interviewed 60 adult offspring, half of whose parents survived the Holocaust and half whose parents were not directly exposed to the horrors of the Nazi era. Compared with their counterparts, the offspring of survivors reported a greater commitment to caring for their parents and experienced more anxiety regarding their parents’ condition.
In the third study, 286 participants, comprised of 143 parent-child combinations – some with Holocaust background and some without – were interviewed. This study found that heightened filial obligation and anxiety were especially noticeable among offspring of survivors who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“These findings have some important practical implications for practitioners assisting adult offspring of Holocaust survivors in caring for their parents,” said Prof. Amit Shrira of BIU’s interdisciplinary department of social sciences, who conducted the research with Dr. Moshe Bensimon of the criminology department and graduate student Ravit Menashe.
“Practitioners should help both sides process negative emotions, resolve conflictual and problematic relationships, and improve their relationships,” they said. “They should also facilitate offspring comprehension of, and empathy towards, complicated behaviors exhibited by the care recipient. Lastly, they should encourage offspring of Holocaust survivors to express their own needs and suggest other methods of care for their parents so that the burden doesn’t fall entirely upon them.”