Although no one in the Orloff family ever spoke directly about Adolf Hitler, yemach shemo, he was a constant presence in their Brooklyn home. Like many other “survivor households,” the horrors of the Holocaust were all-pervasive, casting a heavy shadow on even the most mundane events in their lives. But the impact went beyond childhood fears and nightmares. Though they didn’t realize it then, many children of survivors acknowledge today that in some sense, they, too, are survivors.
A large number of doctoral theses and psychological studies analyzing this population have been published; the terms “survivor’s syndrome” and “second-generation survivor” have been widely accepted among mental health professionals. The findings seem to indicate predictable emotional patterns in many children of survivors. And although no one falls neatly into one pattern several studies even go so far as to classify subjects into distinct primary reaction groups.
Some children of survivors find the whole research fixation to be extremely upsetting. Aside from taking offense at the cold objectivity and detachment with which these studies treat a highly emotional topic they consider the obsession with “survivor’s syndrome” to be a “me generation’s” excessive indulgence in angst and self-pity.
“How can we dare dwell on our relatively slight emotional issues when we can’t comprehend even an ounce of what our parents suffered?” questions Simi Kantor* whose mother lost her entire family in Buchenwald. “Our heroic parents kept their emunah under unimaginable circumstances; whatever we experienced surely pales in comparison.”
Also disturbing to these men and women is that many of them were thankfully spared any negative impact from their parents’ Holocaust experience and they resent being labeled “scarred.”
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