Inherited Traumas and their Modern Legacies
By Sasha Gordon, First Year History
The legacies and memories of the Holocaust do not stop with those who lived through it, they continue to affect every single one of us today. For the descendants of victims, such legacies are even more pronounced. Here, The Bristorian considers such legacies and suggests how we can effectively memorialise the Holocaust.
Evidence has recently come to light that exposes the informant of Anne Frank and her family’s whereabouts as a Jewish businessman, Arnold van den Bergh. It has been suggested that as part of Amsterdam’s Jewish Council he was responsible for handing over the addresses of Jewish families to the Nazis to save his own family. There have been many theories over the decades as to how the Franks were discovered; given that van der Bergh died over seventy years ago, we will likely never know for certain, but let us consider the implications of the new evidence.
For many of us, this will impact how we perceive this period. Some extraordinary stories highlight Jewish communities, often alongside other persecuted groups, coming together to support each other through the torments of the Holocaust. However, there is also a harsh reality to be faced that in other cases the brutal oppression caused people to turn on each other in an instinctive drive for survival.
There may be an instinct, when set alongside the remarkable stories of solidarity, to criticise those that do not match the point of higher comparison, yet we should remember that ultimately these people were not to blame for doing what they did in such a position. Nobody wants to face the idea that their ancestors may have been responsible for such suffering, especially on those from their own community.
Much of the discourse around Holocaust survivors focuses on the trauma of being a victim but we should also consider the trauma – and inherited trauma for descendants – of being complicit.
Anne Frank is held as a symbol of her contemporaries, the fact that she was a typical teenager makes her writing resonate. As much as her diary is a story of war and persecution, it is also a tale of normal teenage frustrations and family dynamics. The Frank family can be seen to be typical of many families - both Jewish and non-Jewish - across Europe. It is a stark reminder that Jews generally felt assimilated and at home in Europe and many believed the growing troubles would come to nothing. This is a deeply unsettling idea when we come to discuss the question of whether the Holocaust could happen again; especially with the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the western world (this article being written mere days after the world was informed that a hostage situation at a Texas synagogue had ‘nothing to do’ with the Jewish community). Although I do believe that society has made progress, it remains essential that Jews and non-Jews alike continue to recognise and call out antisemitism in all its forms.
Anne Frank’s story has resonated with people across the world
The inherited trauma I mentioned above is a very significant part of the way many modern Jews understand the Holocaust. We are the last generation to be able to hear live testimonies from Holocaust survivors or to personally know our ancestors who are survivors. This makes projects like Stephen Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation especially important. I also want to clarify here that the term ‘Holocaust survivor’ applies not just to those who survived the camps but any form of persecution during the period. My grandmother fled Belgium in the 1930s but nevertheless displayed evidence of that survivor mentality, a sense of never feeling completely trusting of society around her. Especially with the differing attitudes towards mental health, many survivors still retained – in various ways – their trauma and this has in some ways trickled down to us, their descendants.
Likewise, Alice Svarin’s wartime experience did not include time in a camp, although she did lose both her father and sister in Auschwitz. Having been born in a market town in Slovakia in 1921, Alice’s marriage in spring of 1941 happened to save her from the deportation of a thousand single Slovak women to Auschwitz. She remained living with her husband in occupied Slovakia until March 1945 when the Germany army entered Slovakia and she, along with the few remaining Jews, went into hiding in the mountains. After the war, she lived under Soviet style socialism in Czechoslovakia with her husband and two daughters, until they left for London in 1968 after the Russian occupation. She joined them there in 1975 after her husband’s untimely death, adapting once again to a new way of life.
The organisation Generation2Generation (G2G) helps the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors tell their family stories. They support them every step of the way so that their presentations to schools and community organisations are of high quality, historically accurate and have lasting impact. By telling the stories of their parents, grandparents, and close relatives, using their testimonies wherever possible, their speakers capture the attention and empathy of their audiences – young and old. In this way, they promote and inspire tolerance and understanding in society.
I think the recent discovery of Arnold van den Bergh’s betrayal has raised a few points. First, it is a reminder that the Holocaust is still very much relevant today and should continue to be so for many years to come. It is also a very poignant reminder that there is an ocean of unknown details, of which we will certainly never know the full depths. Second, it has re-energised the way we consider Holocaust legacies and inherited trauma, pushing us to discuss how it must feel to be the descendant of someone who was both a victim and a perpetrator at once. Third, for those of us that consider the story of Anne Frank as one of the first, and perhaps one of the most relatable, ways that we have connected with the Holocaust, there is a sense of resonance in helping to continue her legacy.
It is unfortunately an insurmountable task to have such closure for every soul lost, yet through projects where each participant lights a candle for a different person, efforts are being made to remember everyone as individuals. Someone once described it to me as ‘six million ones, rather than one six million’. Although we may not be able to remember everything: