ZGram - January 31, 2002 - "I feel your pain!"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

January 31, 2000

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Without further ado, more Holocaustomania:

24 January 2002

  The 'second generation' of  Holocaust survivors

  by Frank Furedi

   - From the Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors to Children
of the   Holocaust Anonymous, children whose parents died in the Holocaust
are lining up   to claim the status of Holocaust victims.

   - There is a growing tendency to interpret victimisation as a kind of
disease that   can be handed down from generation to generation.

   - What is it about today's society that makes people so keen to get a
piece of their   parents' trauma?

   In our therapeutic culture, the politics of memory is on the rise. On an
individual   level, and now across societies, past experiences are
continually reinterpreted.

   The cultural manipulation of memory has been particularly controversial
in relation   to what one side characterises as recovered memory syndrome
and the other as   false memory syndrome. Yet from a sociological
standpoint, the most interesting   aspect of this debate is not who is
right and who is wrong, but the fact that   memory itself has become so
politicised, and that the representation of the past is   so contested.

   In one sense there is nothing new in the manipulation of memory. The
rewriting of   history has produced rich and effective national and
cultural mythologies   throughout past centuries. Now, however, the stakes
have been raised. The   erosion of individual and collective identities has
fostered an unusual interest in the   past, and given rise to fundamental
cultural assumptions about the decisive   influence of the past over the
present.

   As a consequence, history today is rewritten through the language of
emotionalism   and therapy.

   During the past two centuries, the key motif in the rewriting of history
was the   unique greatness of a particular people or culture. National
myths were based on   heroic deeds and glorious events. Such myths were not
simply used as sentimental   celebrations of the past - they were mobilised
to construct a positive vision of the   future. The myth of the American
frontier promised a great destiny for US society,   while British, French
and German national myths were mobilised to provide an   optimistic
representation of future possibilities.

   Today, the rewriting of history is driven by a very different impulse.
The   manipulation of collective memory makes no grand claims on the
future. On the   contrary, the historic memory serves as a monument to a
people's historic   suffering. In a perceptive contribution on this
subject, Ian Buruma has drawn   attention to the tendency of many
minorities 'to define themselves as historic   victims'.

   The Holocaust has become the icon for therapeutic history. The extreme
and   singular brutality of this event ensures that those who perished or
suffered in the   concentration camps are regarded with a reverence
unmatched by any other   groups of victims. Jewish identity - even Israeli
identity - has been fundamentally   recast around the Holocaust. Zionism,
which had traditionally promoted an   optimistic modernist vision of the
pioneering new Jew, has in recent decades   sought to forge a sense of
community around an emotional connection with the   Holocaust.

   Yet, as I know from my own childhood, many of the direct survivors of
the death   camps talked very little in public about their terrible
experience. Their dignified,   self-contained response stands in sharp
contrast to the behaviour of their children   and grandchildren today: the
so-called second- and third-generation survivors. In   recent years, some
of the promoters of second-generation survivor groups have   even
criticised their parents for bottling up their emotions and refusing to
embrace   a victim identity.

   The appeal of the Holocaust, as the basis for creating a sense of
self-identity, has   attracted the attention of competing groups of people
claiming a particular identity   status. Gay activists have insisted that
their suffering during the Holocaust should   be recognised through the
construction of monuments and memorials. Other   activists, representing
gypsies and disabled people, have also demanded that   recognition should
be accorded to their plight during this terrible experience.

   The language associated with Holocaust discourse - particularly the
image of the   traumatised survivor - has been appropriated by numerous
activists determined to   stake a claim to the status associated with
emotional suffering. The Irish potato   famine of the 1840s has been
reinterpreted as an abusive experience that   continues to traumatise
people to this day.

   The emotional power of the Holocaust has been co-opted and transferred
to other   experiences such as the African-American holocaust, the Serbian
holocaust, the   Bosnian holocaust or the Rwandan holocaust. In Germany,
anti-abortion   campaigners hold forth about a holocaust of fetuses; in
Canada, animal rights   activists denounce the holocaust of seals.

   The custom of demanding that past wrongs - in some cases perpetrated
centuries   ago - be put right has acquired momentum during the past few
years. Saying   sorry has allowed public personalities to both embrace the
victim and also to share   vicariously in their pain.

   Politicians have been quick to embrace the ritual of the apology. The
Australian   government organised a National Sorry Day on 26 May 1998, when
Australians   were exhorted to express their sorrow for the injustices
inflicted on Aboriginal   people. A month later, the German government
apologised for the 1904 massacre   of African people in Namibia. UK prime
minister Tony Blair has apologised to the   Irish for Britain's role in
contributing to the suffering that people experienced   during the potato
famine. And the Vatican has apologised for the havoc that the   Crusades
wreaked on the people of the Middle East.

   The demand for a public memorial to commemorate past suffering is not
confined   to representatives of national minorities and ethnic groups.
AIDS activists have   sought to construct monuments to commemorate the
tragedy of AIDS sufferers.   Victim advocates have been particularly
vociferous in innovating rituals and symbols   of remembrance. The wearing
of a ribbon became a potent symbol of remembrance   during the 1990s, and
has been appropriated by numerous interest groups   seeking recognition for
their cause.

   RoadPeace, a British advocacy group devoted to the cause of traffic
victims,   self-consciously promotes semi-religious symbols of remembrance
to gain support   (1). Its 'Red Flag Campaign' was launched in August 1997
'to mark the start of an   appeal for a permanent national memorial to road
victims'. RoadPeace publications   continually emphasise the theme of
remembrance. Road victims - those 'who have   died on the roads since the
advent of motor traffic' - are presented as the   'unnamed' casualties of a
century-long war. The European Federation of Road   Traffic Victims has
designated the third Sunday of November as the European Day   of
Remembrance for road crash victims. Candlelit vigils, shrines and roadside
memorials are the typical artefacts of victim culture.

   The politicisation of memory has stimulated individuals to re-examine
their own   biographies. In some cases individuals have literally invented
a personal narrative of   victimisation. Binjamin Wilkomirski, author of
Fragments - a harrowing account of a   Jewish childhood destroyed by the
Holocaust - had his memoir exposed as a fake.   Wilkomirski was actually
Bruno Grosjean, a Swiss man who had invented his   Jewishness and his
Holocaust experience.

   There have been cases where individuals have falsely claimed to be AIDS
sufferers   in order to claim the status of a victim. The American social
scientist Carol Tavris   has raised some interesting questions about why so
many women find their way   into sexual survivor groups. She believes that
the 'sexual-abuse-victim story   crystallises many of society's anxieties'
and therefore 'draws like a magnet those   who feel vulnerable and
victimised, and who wish to share in society's sympathy'.

   Clearly, the appeal of the victim story goes beyond that of sexual
abuse. In   contemporary society, a cry for recognition and the desire to
belong often find   their focus in victim identity. And there is a growing
tendency to interpret   victimisation as a kind of disease that can be
handed down from generation to   generation. This paradigm is most
coherently developed in recent studies of   Holocaust survivors.

   It is claimed that the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors
ought to be   considered victims just as much as their ancestors, who had
to confront the   horrors of Nazi death camps directly. As a result,
attention has shifted to the   problems of the so-called second generation
of Holocaust survivors.

   Some studies contend that children born to Holocaust survivors became
the   victims of their parents' own destructive experience. 'These
children, now grown   men and women, have sometimes been raised in a
psychological atmosphere   poisoned by the scarring that their survivor
parents have brought to their   child-rearing tasks', claims one authority.
According to proponents of this thesis,   second-generation survivors often
grew up in a family atmosphere where they   were stifled by
over-protectiveness, shame and mistrust. As one writer on the   subject
argues, 'Most members of the second generation whose voices have been
heard feel that they have been damaged in some way through their parents'
Holocaust experience'.

   The literature on the second generation provides useful insights into
understanding the social construction of victim identity. According to the
accepted   paradigm, the compulsive behaviour of concentration camp
survivors has led to   negative and stifling parenting styles, which in
turn had a damaging impact on their   children.

   One of the most common claims made about camp survivors is that they
sought to   become parents in order to acquire a new identity for
themselves. Parents often   named their children after a lost favourite
relative. It is claimed that children, who   felt that they had been 'given
the mission to be a link in the broken chain of   families and to fill the
emptiness in their parents' lives', often 'felt burdened and   weighed down
by such impossible expectations'.

   Yet severe dislocation, suffering and tragic loss, which lead to
distinct   overprotective parenting styles, are by no means confined to any
particular   experience. Adults who have experienced the trials of war,
hunger and death will   invariably inflict their insecurities on their
family. And whether such parental   anxieties are particularly damaging for
children is far from evident.

   The case of the 'second generation', with its redefinition of family
life as a conduit   for victimisation, says more about the therapeutic
discourse of the post-1960s era   than about the parenting skills of their
fathers and mothers. The invention of the   second generation is,
ultimately, the outcome of a culture which increasingly links   individual
identity to the experience of childhood.

   Victim identity, and the moral authority accorded to it, seems to allow
people to   make sense of their experience. Many who describe themselves as
second-generation survivors are involved in medicine, counselling,
psychotherapy,   social work and education, and are drawn towards
expressing their identity   through the vocabulary of therapy.

   The activists in second-generation survivor groups recognise the
predominant role   played by therapeutic professionals in this movement.
Take this activists' advice to   survivor groups:

   'Start your own "Rap group" by just getting together on a weekly basis,
or there is   a good probability that one of your members may be a social
worker, or a   counsellor of some type. In my first group there was a
clinical psychologist and a   social worker.'

   Second-generation survivor activists appear to be preoccupied with
forging a   distinct identity - one that distances them from the experience
of their parents.   For example, the host of the website 'Resources for
Children of Holocaust   Survivors' carefully draws attention to the fact
that his page is not for Holocaust   victims who, it is claimed, already
have a lot of resources geared towards their   needs (2). The website is
for their children. 'It is not about the legacy; it is about   living with
the legacy', he notes.

   These 'Children of Holocaust Survivors' want to claim a separate and
distinct   survivor identity both from their parents, and from one another.
It is evident that   many individuals are not satisfied with being defined
merely as a second-generation   survivor. There are numerous constituencies
demanding to be recognised as   possessing a distinct victim identity:
including the International Association of   Lesbian and Gay Children of
Holocaust Survivors, Descendants of the Jewish   Community of Augsburg,
Second Generation Children from Nuremberg, and the   Jewish Lesbian
Daughters of Holocaust Survivors.

   The representation of the traumatic harm faced by second-generation
survivors is   usually promoted through anecdotes, and through the
retrospective association of   private troubles with family background. The
few studies that have attempted to   test the theory of the
intergenerational transmission of trauma have failed to find   any
validation for this thesis. But whatever the facts of the matter, activists
are   busy constructing a victim identity through rendering their family
existence   pathological.

   Aping the American addiction and co-dependency movement, some
second-generation activists have even launched 'Children of the Holocaust
Anonymous'. This initiative has self-consciously borrowed the Alcoholics
Anonymous '12-step' support programme to support its constituents. And
there   is more to come, as publicists are promising to bring the third
generation of   survivors into the frame.

   Predictably, the second-generation survivor paradigm is already being
imitated by   other claimants to victim status. According to a survey
carried out by a   psychologist in 1997, 750,000 British women are still
suffering from the stress and   trauma of the Second World War. The
psychologist Melinda Waugh calls these   women the 'forgotten generation',
and states that it is 'possible that children of   the women bore the
psychological scars of post-traumatic stress disorder'. All this
speculation was based on extrapolation from a survey involving 100 women.

   Watch this space for the fourth and fifth generation of victims.

   Frank Furedi is a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury
and is the   author of Paranoid Parenting, Penguin 2001. Buy this book from
Amazon (UK)

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(Source:   http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000000545B.htm )

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Thought for the Day:

"It is not a crime to get head lice, but it is a crime to keep them and be
a perpetual source of infection for others."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)

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