Book Review: Making Music Was The Best Revenge
My Effin’ Life By Geddy Lee with Daniel Richler HarperCollins Publishers, 511 pp. Reviewed by Eva Fogelman How does a son of Auschwitz survivors get a name such as Geddy Lee? So begins My Effin’ Life, …
Format: Article
Antisemitism Influences Freud’s Jewish Identity
Review of Merle Molofsky’s (Ed.) Jew-Hating: The Black Milk of Civilization (International Psychoanalytic Books, 2022), ISBN: 978-1- 956864-35-9, 356 pages, paperback, $35. Written by Eva Fogelman, 2024. The current proliferation of expressions of antisemitism motivates …
Menachem Daum Obituary
Menachem Daum, 77, Filmmaker Who Explored the World of Hasidim, Dies: His acclaimed documentary “A Life Apart” presented a complex portrait of a religious group usually depicted as somber and impenetrable. Menachem Daum, a filmmaker …
Gender as a Factor in Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
This paper was presented at the Women in the Holocaust: International Scientific Conference. 10 – 12 Oct 2023. Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory- Kraljice Natalije 45, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. See my blog post: Gender …
Gender as a Dynamic in Women Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
I will be presenting at the Women in the Holocaust: International Scientific Conference. 10 – 12 Oct 2023. Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory- Kraljice Natalije 45, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. The Conference is presented by …
Book Review | The Baggage You Can’t Leave Behind
Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory By Janet Malcolm Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 176 pp. Immigrant Baggage: Morticians, Purloined Diaries, and Other Theatrics of Exile By Maxim D. Shrayer Cherry Orchard Books, 146 pp. Daughter …
Descendants of the Holocaust Inherit Two Competing Stories
When my father died, Elie Wiesel came to my home to make a shiva call. The first question he asked, “Did your father write down his story?” This question continues to haunt me every day …
Saviors at Nazi Ground Zero
Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” introduced the world to the improbable enigma and moral dilemma of a German Nazi Party member who rescued Jews. The combined commercial forces of Spielberg and the Hollywood image-making machine turned …
Hidden by the Holocaust as young children…
Hidden by the Holocaust as young children, they escaped the Nazis by disappearing into attics and basements. Now, these last survivors are coming forward to reclaim a childhood lost. “These individuals had to grow up …
Who is considered a Holocaust survivor?
My parents were both Polish Jews and survived the Holocaust through twists of fate that saved them from the horrors of the Nazi death camps. My father escaped from a ghetto in Belarus to the …
Group Belonging and Mourning as Factors in Resilience in the Second Generation of Holocaust Survivors
Historically, the marker event for the identifiability of children of survivors as a group was the seminal article in the New York Times by journalist Helen Epstein, herself a child of Holocaust survivors, on June …
As a Holocaust scholar and child of survivors, I’m horrified that a bigot may lead Yad Vashem
The opposition is mounting to the prospect of Effi Eitam, a former far-right Israeli politician and general, becoming chair of Israel’s national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. Among those urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change …
For Survivor Descendants, the Past is Prologue
When I see the long lines at the supermarket, I am reminded of my mother telling me about standing in line all night to get a loaf of bread for her parents and four siblings …
Adult Offspring of Holocaust Survivors as Moral Voices in the American-Jewish Community
I am an adult child of Holocaust survivors born in a half bombed out hospital in Kassel, Germany. For me, the whole notion of the Holocaust evokes never ending questions about human beings who annihilate …
Holocaust Survivor Families: The Dynamics of Adaptation
“As a child of survivors and as a psychologist who has worked with survivors and their families for 40 years, I am fascinated in particular by the varied dynamics of adaptation that these families manifest” …
Holocaust Child Survivors, Sixty-Five Years After Liberation: From Mourning to Creativity
Most of the world does not contemplate children as survivors of the Holocaust; surely it is understandable why this is the case. After all, the image that most have is that of Jews spilling out …
Third Generation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
“Why are Holocaust survivors obsessed with future generations remembering? Why do they command us all to Zachor, to remember? What is it they want us to remember?” That is the challenge every post-Holocaust generation will …
The Evolution of a Second-Generation of Holocaust Survivor Identity
In the late 1960s, Henry Krystal, a psychoanalyst and Auschwitz survivor, organized several conferences for doctors, social-service providers, and German government officials on the after-effects of “massive psychic trauma” on survivors of Nazi concentration camps …
The pandemic has been emblematic of the human experience
The pandemic has been emblematic of the human experience. Some people are thriving, others are confronting stresses, and some are completely traumatized. One’s circumstances, of course, can either impede or enhance, the emotional state and …
Helping Holocaust Survivor’s Children
When the film I co-produced and wrote, Breaking the Silence: The Generation After the Holocaust, was first broadcast on PBS in 1984, Michael Hinds wrote about the work I have done raising awareness for and …
Marion Pritchard, Holocaust hero
Under conditions of terror, most people are passive bystanders. Some become persecutors, while few jeopardize their lives to save the victims. Marion Pritchard, who died in December 2016 at the age of 96, risked her …
Remembering Henry Krystal, Pioneer in Trauma Therapy
In December 1976, thanks to my therapy experience with young adult children of Holocaust survivors, I found myself attending a workshop with Dr. Henry Krystal, the psychoanalyst who virtually created trauma therapy as a specialized …
Appreciating Robert Jay Lifton
Letters to the Editor of Clio’s Psyche. Dear Editor, In 1976, along with a social worker, I started co-leading awareness groups for children of Holocaust survivors at Boston University. We were young mental-health professionals in …
The Rescuer Self
Rescue of Jews under the Nazis was, in psychological parlance, a “rare behavior.” From a population of 700 million in Germany and the allied occupied countries, the thousands who risked their lives to save Jews …