Holocaust survivors and therapy?

I don't know if this would potentially trigger anyone, thus the trigger icon on the post. Hopefully not, but reading about Holocaust survivors tends to make me cry ... so...

I recently read a book about the Jewish Resistance during WW2. It was really interesting. I went online and started reading stories about Holocaust survivors, and our local community paper had a few interviews recently.

Everything I'm reading sounds *horrible*. Horrible is too nice of a word. It sounds unbelievably, life-changing-ly awful. Just... mind-blowing awfulness. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around how people behaved at the time, the amount of... not just killing, but really senseless killing and callousness.

But, as I'm still struggling with my own therapy, something occurred to me. I'm reading stories about people who literally lost their entire families. People who escaped death camps, labor camps, starvation, gas chambers. People who had *everything* taken from them, every possession they owned, every dignity.

And, not one of them talked about therapy as a way of recovery. Not one of them said, "I am so thankful that I had a wonderful, kind therapist who helped me process all of this pain, so that I could go on and create a beautiful, meaningful life, despite the horror that I experienced."

None of them. Is it because therapy is a private enough thing, especially for an older generation, that they wouldn't consider it appropriate to mention in such a public setting? Is it because they didn't ever receive therapy? If that's true, how did they manage to go on? These are people who look beautiful, grateful to be alive, and like they've found a purpose for living. They got married, had kids, found ways to work.

Meanwhile, me with my rather insignificant-seeming-litany-of-traumas, I haven't dated in decades, shirk in horror at the thought of giving birth, can't imagine anyone ever wanting to marry me, hate my job, feel useless and pointless and like I don't fit anywhere in the world, and am pretty much just ready to just give up on this whole planet-earth-thing.

I don't know what to do with that. Am I wrong? How do people go through such a life-changing, huge, global atrocity - and come out being able to make a good life for themselves, without therapy as a way to process and heal? Maybe therapy's NOT the answer I thought it was?

Sorry if this is inappropriate, or weird... just... it's been weighing on me a bit.

I think, for one, there may have been a great deal of support within their own synagogues, other survivors, etc. that served that purpose for them. I had family members and close family friends who fled Germany just prior to the war. That generation, I have found, had incredibly strong faith that became their rock to rest upon. This also occurred in the very early years of psychotherapy. It was not commonly used, so people had to find other ways to manage their pain and trauma (again, churches and synagogues very often served that communal purpose).

Even my parents' generation (they are in their 80's) aren't generally comfortable with therapy. I remember my mother talking about the three years when she lost two pregnancies followed by losing a newborn to congenital leukemia. She relied on the support of my father and close family and, again, leaned heavily on her faith to make it through.

I wanted to add: These survivors I found to have lived very much in life-long emotional pain, and the amount of struggle and tragedy in their lives was unfathomable. Their pain was palpable, but I found along with their deep well of grief and sadness was a daily gratefulness for the blessings they saw before them each day. Their new lives and new families were their joy, inspiration, and motivation to continue to live. They had great wisdom and perspective about what was truly important. They had amazing personal resilience because they had survived the worst and knew it, and they had a deep-felt stubbornness to persevere.

I was very blessed to have grown up around those amazingly strong and inspirational people (all but one were women).

Wow. Thanks Lolagrace. That makes a lot of sense (the support and spiritual faith), and I hadn't really thought about the fact that therapy was still in its infancy back then.

And, thanks for sharing the personal perspective. I do not know any survivors personally, but I have so much respect for them, what they've been through, and how they've built their lives since then. It's truly awe-inspiring.

Only one of them ever really talked about their experiences in any detail. She actually wrote a book (just published within her family mainly). The others, we knew their story, but they did NOT like to talk about it; in fact, they would almost get angry when it was brought up like it opened up wounds they had very carefully sealed. They were very protective of that history remaining very private. Their reaction was often to wave any talk of the past off (quite literally -- I can still see the one waving that hand like brushing it aside) and say something like "Oh, that was a long time ago and it is over." I think they really compartmentalized those experiences into very secure boxes.

Therapy is not the answer, it's just one way out of many possible ways, in my opinion. I think the answer is to find meaning and build resilience within yourself - some do that in therapy, some prefer other ways. Now I may be entirely wrong because, even though I know about the Holocaust, I don't know anyone who was directly impacted by it. But from what I've read and from what I understand, it sounds like these people had to process the pain on some level while they were still experiencing it, if they wanted to survive. I was very touched by Frankl's story - he was one of the survivors and talked about the importance of finding meaning in order to survive such atrocities. He later developed a type of existential therapy based on his experience. But I think that the Holocaust was an extreme, something unthinkable. Most of us never go through that level of trauma - and I don't think that makes smaller traumas any less important. Sure, this helps to put things into perspective, we can be thankful for being alive, for being healthy, for being free - but our own personal histories can make their own types of wounds and scars. I don't find it helpful to dismiss these by comparing them to larger-scale traumas. Your pain is yours and it's real, and in my opinion that males it worth working with.

My long term T had 2 parents that survived Auschwitz. From what my T told me, they were very traumatized folks to say the least (understandably!!) They weren't magically "better" with time. In fact, they were emotionally impaired.

They may have survived but it sounds like they were never emotionally "fine" just because they came through alive.

guilloche, I agree with lolagrace in terms of importance of community and shared experiences. Whether talking about the Jewish Holocaust, the situation in Palestine, current day Iraq and Afghanistan, or 9/11, I've noticed that psychologists often underestimate the importance and power of shared experiences of horrific nature that bring people together in a way that's healing to everybody who is open enough to feed from that kind of energy. It does not magically cure people but in reality the result is much better than psychologists would have imagined based on individual analysis of the people.

And let's not forget philosophers throughout history (including Frankl who experience Holocaust firsthand) who talked about meaning-making, and in my view this can work on an individual level or on a societal level. Religion itself is also related to giving enduring and rich meaning to lives that can seem fragile, unpredictable, and leave us feeling powerless.

The worst kind of traumas in my view (and I have dealt with PTSD) are ones that make you feel deeply alone and lonely. That's why putting someone in a cell in prison by themselves for long time is considered torture, and rightly so. The prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and Cuba, aside from other kinds of torture, have often included physical isolation, not to mention sensory deprivation which itself is another kind of severe isolation (people having to wear things that not allow them to see or hear anything at all).

A few years ago with my sister in hospital for suicide I had felt so alone in a such a deep level it's hard to fathom. Dad was physically gone, mom was emotionally gone. Because of mom's shame, she also cut all family's relations with others, so I could not eve tell my relatives what was happening. At the time I too was severely depressed in the first place so had no personal connections either.

I really urge people not to let such things happen to them or their families. Don't think about shame, about guilt, about judgements, we are all human, we make mistakes, if you're in a tough time, let people into your life, and do the same to them also so it's a natural give and take, friend helping friend. These things are much easier with tragedies on a large scale but if you yourself or your family experience horror, share it. Not everybody wants to hear or help but some people do, if you let them. This is how bonds are made and strengthened.

While many people (myself included) very much dislike the forced social interactions, lack of privacy, threats to autonomy and individualism, this does not mean we have to live withing artificial walls. There is a happy medium of connection with good caring people and having your own space too. It takes courage but it's worth it. This is my goal, to do this for myself. In fact, me coming here is a small step in that journey.

Lastly, if you have faith, if you enjoy thinking about life and existence and why we are here and where we're going, don't stop doing that. Having a purpose, having a "why" for one's life is exceptionally powerful. The times I felt my life had a real purpose and there was a reason I was alive and God actually existed and cared about me, I put up with kinds of difficulties that now I shutter to imagine....

I may be triggered, I don't know, so I'll just stop....

Edit: these responses made while I was writing this post, so wanted to add also agree with brillskep about meaning making and resilience, and growlycat about survival not meaning that all is fine. In tragedies there are always some who survive and live life to fullest afterwards, and some who just survive, broken and damaged and just get worse over time.

I lost about 100 relatives in holocaust including my great grandparents. ( my grandparents survived but lost all their siblings and their parents etc)

So this topic is close to my heart.

Significant number of holocaust survivors committed suicide or attempted. I would assume one can't or has hard time function with such PTSD. Therapy wasn't something people did then. And if one lived in communist country it wsnt even available.

I personally can't even talk about it and not cry so it is brutal for survivors to talk about it.

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I've definitely thought about recovery from the Holocaust and its many traumas of WWII including the incessant bombings in the UK, the German occupations, kindertransport and even the massive disruption of life throughout the US, career and family disruptions, even blackout drills and dim outs.

The aftermath required a massive rebuilding, not only of structures, but of lives and livelihoods. I speculate that many were challenged enough by managing everyday necessities.

Incidentally, "critical incident stress debriefing," has come under criticism as an effective intervention following a traumatic event.

You may want to read Elie Weisel's Night. Also, it's well-documented that children of Holocaust survivors often "carry" the denied emotional pain of their parents. There are characteristics displayed by the children, even when their parents never spoke of their experiences--somehow, those experiences are played out emotionally in the family.

In that generation is was common to not talk about how hard things were or what you had been through. Life was rough all over, as my grandmother said, there was no point in talking about it. My other grandparents and great grandparents used to say similar things. You just didnt talk about such things.my grandparents all lived to be at least 90 years old, and i never heard any of them complain about a thing they ever went through, even abuse and losing their homes and such. They were just grateful to be alive.

Ouch. Thanks for sharing this... it's a little scary... because that sounds like how I've reacted to my own stuff (the waving of hands when a friend tried to "help" by talking about my stuff.)

(Not comparing my own stuff to what these people went through, but it was a bit eerie!)

Thanks Brillstep. I've read some of Frankl's work (I can't remember if I actually got through the entire book. It was very good, but I kept crying... so I may not have finished it). The idea of making meaning as the way to process something makes sense, but seems really hard too.

Growlycat - thanks for the reality check. It makes more sense to me that they wouldn't just magically get better, and perhaps the articles I've seen were just putting things in the best light possible.

Thanks Partless. That makes a lot of sense that feeling isolated and alone would make any trauma worse, while feeling connected to others would help lessen the impact. It lines up with things I've seen talking about parenting, how if your child has something traumatic happen, a lot of how well they deal with it depends on how connected and supported they are within their family. It's kind of sad, because I feel like our society is getting less connected (but maybe that's just my bias, from my very disconnected family).

Really good advice to reach out and stay connected, though I think that some of us have families that are not... helpful to connect with. But, it's good to try to find friends you can connect with and support that way.

(((Divine1966))) I'm sorry for your losses. I cry too when I try to talk about this stuff, because it's so overwhelming to me to think about. I was crying in piano lesson earlier this week, talking about this stuff with my teacher. It really is awful to think about (but should not be forgotten). Thanks for adding to the discussion, it makes me really sad to think of people surviving so much only to want to kill themselves after.

Missbella - I'm not really good at history, so honestly, I hadn't thought of all the other disruptions to normal life that people faced, even when they weren't hauled away to a concentration camp. And, I saw something about the critical incident debriefing therapy too recently! I think I saw it on a list of therapies that could be potential damaging to people - and I was *really* surprised. I thought it was considered very well thought of as a way to help folks immediately start to process. I guess not?

Feralkittymom - thanks for the book recommendation, I'll look for it. It sounds interesting.

StarryNight, thanks. I really do understand the inclination to not talk about things. That's probably my #1 sticking point in therapy, and when I started trying to be more open, my brain started obsessing over the song that goes... "don't want to, don't want to talk about it... I said why not? Don't want to think about it!"

I get that... but I wonder how they're able to go on anyway. Maybe that's a question for everyone here, and maybe it's just what people *do*. I feel like there are things in my life where, even though the trauma seems to be very small, my reaction was a big *oh heck no, no way, no how, not ever going there, uh-uh".

Lots of hugs to you all, and good wishes for everyone suffering from any kind of trauma. May we all find some meaning, and peace, and joy, and hope... and all that good stuff.

guilloche, thank you for responding to everybody here and reading all the posts, I sometimes make threads and sort of forget about them or don't read all posts, and certainly it's not often I respond to every poster so that's nice of you.

I agree with you about the fact that some of us have families that are not particularly "helpful to connect with." As I had said in my post, though my family had been helpful in other circumstances, in the circumstance that caused that trauma, they contributed to my PTSD both indirectly and also directly. I would have been better off then seeking a support group. I had no therapist at the time. My stupid insistence at getting support through family cost me big time.

I also want to say something else about the original question. I think people really should not imagine how they would feel if X tragedy happened to them at present. They are not other people and they don't live at that time.

For instance my parents live through very difficult physical and emotional issues. It damaged them but did not break them. Same thing happening to many people right now in my neighborhood might break them. But it's strange to try to compare them directly.

Then on top of that you have the personal variation, how some people are way more resilient than others. But I have feeling that older generations lived the kind of life that you had to be resilient just to survive. My friend once said if her parents take away her sister's access to computer for a week, she would be literally traumatized. She was half-kidding but to me it was interesting how their mother raised them all by herself in a home that often did not have hot water and sometimes even electricity. The mother herself had been raised in a worse environment still.

So yeah, psychologists should not assume what should traumatize someone would, or to try to force the person to deal with a trauma that does not exist. This also works the other way. What traumatized me personally may not traumatize you or another person. There is no objective correlate to what definitely results in trauma and what doesn't. The most important part is subjective feelings, like of helplessness and so forth. That's why personal meaning-making (or religious) can make a lot of difference. Same with having social support.

I'd like to introduce the possibility that when in crisis of that magnitude, you don't consider yourself traumatized. You consider what has to be done day by day. Things don't magically get better after a worldchanging historic event that you've survived. It takes years of uncertainty, scraping by, rebuilding in an absolutely literal way. and you're focused on that.

You're focused emotionally on the loss, if anything. It's a shock too deep, too big to grasp. Maybe not ever.

You don't have time to navel gaze about it. You're busy living it, and things like that...you never stop living it. You learn to go on. You have scars, you're never the person you were. You learn to be someone else, someone who is After.

I mean this in the sense of horrific worldshattering disasters, not specifically the Holocaust, because I am not Jewish and do not have the right to speak for them. I mean it only as food for thought, from the perspective of someone who went through a disaster that made the history books. I deeply apologize if I offend and please let me know if I should edit or delete my post. I do not, cannot, will not compare my experience to the systematic murder of a marginalized group of people. Again I only mean it in the general sense.

He also speaks of post-war experiences of survivors in his book Day ( one of trilogy night, dawn, day) it is a fiction but based on real experiences (having hard time and coming to terms with the past) .

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My H's grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. He is a wonderful, strong, open-hearted man. (His family was executed in front of him, leaving him orphaned at 9.) While some of his other relatives squawked about my marrying into the family, he always welcomed me with open arms, which I think speaks many, many volumes about his character. I could write a huge long post about how awesome he is.

And yet, there are many ways in which he is very emotionally fragile. It's just not obvious -- I feel like that trauma manifests itself in other ways.

Totally agree with what lolagrace said about the sense of community. What helped my H's grandpa survive was the fact that the Jewish community was small and threatened, and they helped each other. He is also a man of faith. I also agree that therapy wasn't much of a thing back then, and I get the sense from my H's family that therapy isn't something they really embrace even now. They can be close-minded about some things.

I'm a little wary of what I'm going to say next because I'm afraid of coming of as cynical and dismissive, and so I'll just preface it by saying I'm just pointing out a reality, and I have no idea how much it really comes into play. But I'm encouraged by the people who talk about survivors who did NOT come out undamaged, who DO carry a large burden, which may be silent but gets passed onto later generations. And that is that the people who are willing to talk, and who are most celebrated, are often the ones who have done best. It's unclear why some people are really resilient to this level of trauma -- in fact several of my colleagues study exactly this -- but we do know that some people really are. They don't suffer NO damage, but they do manage to come through and do pretty well.

You're just less likely to read about the people who committed suicide (which even now has a lot of shame attached to it, even more back then), or who have been bitter and angry the rest of their lives. You're more likely to hear about people who were met with unspeakable horror, but triumphed over adversity. No one wants to hear "Ever since my uncle left the camp, he's been a real a s s hole." Of course you can totally understand why someone might be just so hurt and traumatized that they could never associate properly with people again, so you'd forgive a man for being a jerk the rest of his life after something like that. But it's not the story we want to hear.

And also, it's a little easier for other people to be understanding about traumas that are obvious. While the Jews continue to have a hard time in many parts of the world, within their community, it's known what it means to have come out of the camps. But if you have a "hidden" illness, like depression, it can be harder to find support. Indeed, it's not like the Jewish community is much different from others in terms of domestic violence and abuse -- people are still people, and when it's something they don't have to see directly, they can dismiss it. A tattooed number on your hand is harder to ignore.

Bottom line is, yes, there are ways to make it without therapy. Some people would have made it without therapy anyway, and some people were done well by their close-knit community and faith. There are people who didn't make it, though. And there are aspects of the story and how it is told in some instances (I second the recommendation of "Night") that can lead to a person overemphasizing the ability to get past such a trauma, which for some people is a real struggle.

In other words, there is nothing wrong with using something other than therapy to get through the personal ugliness someone may encounter, and there is also nothing wrong with using therapy. And the magnitude of the ugliness isn't a fair comparison. We all have to do what we have to do.

As a grandchild product of 4 holocaust survivors- yeah, they are pretty mentally screwed up. (and it is still vibrating down generations later.)

They usually say the only thing that got them through it is the other survivors, that they weren't alone. In the end, most of them (my grandarents) DID get therapy, much later in life. It doesn't really help. They have enormous survivor's guilt. They prefer not to think about it and live for the present.

Yes, exactly.
There was a huge movement after WWII (in Europe anyway) about the idea that people had suffered, now it was over and let's move on. Let's not ever talk about the past because it's too painful.
A lot of people had suffered: lost their home, lost relatives, were starving, etc.
People were traumatized. And rightly so. But that meant that they didn't want to hear about suffering. They wanted to focus on the future, which is of course understandable but is also very problematic because it brushes aside the exerience of people who went through hell.

There was also a lot of guilt mixed with this, the idea of "How could we let this happen?"

My grandfather was sent to a concentration camp (Bergen-Belsen), he wasn't Jewish, he was a communist. When he returned, he told my grandmother that as soon as people heard he had been to a camp, they'd get uncomfortable and quickly change the subject.
People didn't want to know. So survivors learnt quickly that they had to shut up.

Even those who didn't shut up and spoke up were met with an overwhelming silence: Primo Levi's book published in 1947 (If This is a Man) detailing his experience in Auschwitz and his return to Italy all through Eastern Europe from the camp was not a best-seller at all.
It was too soon.

It's only in the seventies with the next generation that people were ready to hear about what had happened.

I was born in the 1950s, and by the time I studied history in school, WWII was viewed as history rather than an immediate experience. Though the impact was far less severe, the entire US was focused on the war, be it (mostly) men interrupting their lives to go overseas, rationing. etc. But there was SO much to do to return to normal, and of course younger folks made up for lost time marrying and starting families.

One can never vouch for the accuracy of Wikipedia of course, but here's a summary of how the nation changed. I can't imagine this level of cooperation or unity toward an effort today. It seems every man, woman and child participated and sacrificed. And then it was over.
United States home front during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I agree with this.

Of course it's hard for anybody, including a Jew, to speak about what they saw or how they felt because no Jew can serve as speaker for what all Jews experienced anymore than single Armenian can speak about the earlier Armenian genocide or African can speak of various genocides in Africa (that happened shockingly within last couple of decades and many don't seem to know or care about them).

But what you say here is something I've also heard from quite a few other people, the importance of that small community. I think many people are aware of psychology how this works. It's unfortunate that some people try to create that "threatened-us versus them" mentality to encourage people to support wars and other heinous acts that are only of interest to people like rich power hungry politicians and businesses that make their best money during wars (e.g. manufacturers of military equipment). What brought Jews (and other minorities who faced a real powerful threat at the time) together, in my view, was a natural reaction to horrors around them and shared identity. In a way it was practical, necessary. That's what made it powerful.

But as it's been mentioned, sometimes this creates a lot of guilt for people who feel like they're leaving others behind. I'm focusing on psychology of it here, not politics or other aspects I'm not aware of. Two things can happen, either you constantly try to fake the threat in order to remain close together or you start to separate and feel guilt. I imagine separation is most difficult for a person who never felt proud or interested in their identity till they experienced horrors that made them aware of such identity. Now if they separate and live their own life with focus on other aspects of their identity, who are they? That's what a Jewish guy once said on his blog, and I paraphrase, "I must be Jewish first and everything else second, for if not, I don't know who I am."

Lastly I want to comment on you cautiously mentioning that stories of resilience overshadow stories of suicide and trauma. This is how I see this: When I was in school, all I read was about damages of war to things, to people. I think it's assumed that everybody thinks that way already, about people of that generation, about war vets. So the inspirational stories are trying to challenge that view.

It's like when you read about women being assaulted, raped. Stories of survivors who emerged stronger than ever are what is supposed to give hope to those struggling. We live in an age of human potential. So I think that's in keeping with that mindset. I've read quite horrific stories of what some women did as revenge, not to mention how many attempted suicide and ended up hurting themselves in many ways and never recovered from the assault. But nobody thought rape was good or harmless anymore than genocide or peppering a country with bombs. But I think people thirst for positivity and inspiration and role models.

Thanks for your views.

This is also the same for my fiance's grandma. She grew up in Northern Italy during WWII. She went from upper middle class down to so poor they barely had food and often had no shoes. For her, she survived and coped because she had her family and her town. It's how she survives today. Most her friends are Italian and from her town, and then she has her immediate family nearby (her daughter lives with her and she bought my fiance and I a condo like 4 blocks from her house). Their culture is also different. In their culture it's appropriate to yell at each other. It's their way of expressing emotions, and expressing love. I still have a difficult time with the yelling...

My fiance's grandma doesn't understand me. She doesn't understand mental health, therapists, psychiatrists, psych meds... She always tells me to stop worrying about everything...even stop worrying about her! She says the only things I need to worry about in life is myself, my fiance, my dogs, and any future children. If those 4 things are okay, then there's nothing to worry about. She calls me a cryer...lol. And when my fiance tells his family I'm upset, they freak out. I'm told to not be upset or mad. It's like they don't allow me to feel any negative emotions. They jusy don't get it. But that's okay. I understand where they're coming from, so I set boundaries.

Times have changed since WWII. It's one of the down sides of technology. Instead of tight-knit families, we have broken homes. Instead of neighbors, we have facebook friends. Instead of going outside and socializing, we have social media. We have more and more people tryi g to escape from reality because we no longer socialize like we as humans are meant to. So now we have therapy to teach us how to cope and socialize. Many form intimate bonds with our Ts because we are deprived of such intimate relationships.

And a perfect example of this: pregnancy and motherhood. Before the village helped raise a baby. Family, friends, neighbors would help the new family with everything concerning a baby. We didn't need lamaze classes, breast-feeding classes, child-rearing classes, or books, or to seek out mommy and me classes. Those existed within your own community. They were your friends and family. Mothers suffered less from postpartum because they had so much support.

Childhood is another example. Children used to walk to school, play in parks, ride their bikes outside. Now they place on computers, tablets, and phones. Children have more adjustment issues, health issues, etc.

Please don't think I'm anti-technology because here I sit on my phone getting support from an online group of people. Technology has helped society (education, communication, etc), but it did also hurt it.

So when asked how did/do people from war times cope, it's simply because it was a different type of way of living. We all have scars from life, some bigger some smaller. And we all cope the best way we know how to. Sometimes the wounds are too great for an individual or group, or sometimes there's not enough support. But in the end, the majority of us look to others to help us find a way through the struggles of life.

Partless, thanks for noticing my responses . I try. I don't always do it, sometimes I get too depressed, or overwhelmed, or just lose track of things. But I try when I can, because I know it feel really bad to reply to someone, and then not get any kind of acknowledgement. Maybe not for everyone, but for some of us, it can sting a little. And, I do appreciate it when people take the time to reply on my threads and join the conversation and share their experiences and thoughts!

The family stuff sure is hard, isn't it. It's one thing I've had to come to accept, I've realized that I can't go to some people in my family (mom!) for support, because they are literally incapable of providing support or empathy. When I've tried reaching out in the past, I've gotten hurt worse. So, it's better, for my own sanity, to avoid doing that with them. Unfortunate, but lesson learned.

I think I understand what you mean about not trying to guess how we would feel if things happened to us, since so much of our context is different. But, for me, I can't really turn that off. It's just this automatic emotional gut reaction. Even when reading here, some things people have written about friends and family members, I just get overwhelmed with imagining how I think that would feel very quickly - it's not a conscious decision, it's more like a visceral reaction. It's probably worse when I'm already in a rough place though, so I probably need to take that as my lesson to be careful about what I read or pay attention to when I'm not in the best space. Thanks.

And, yeah, the individual differences around what is traumatizing are kind of fascinating!

Skywalker - "I'd like to introduce the possibility that when in crisis of that magnitude, you don't consider yourself traumatized. You consider what has to be done day by day." -- oh yeah, that makes sense. It's like when you get injured, and are hyper-focused on what you need to do, and only later realize how much it hurts (I think that's similar to what you're describing). Except on a much bigger scale. Makes sense to me.

Thanks Divine1966! I haven't looked up the books (!) yet, but I will...

Thanks SallyBrown. This: "...the people who are willing to talk, and who are most celebrated, are often the ones who have done best. " - makes a lot of sense to me. I was thinking about this, and I think you expressed it much more clearer than what was rumbling in my head.

It's really interesting that you have colleagues who are studying personal difference in resilience to trauma. That must be fascinating work... I think, personally, it attracts me because it's hard to not look at my own stuff, and see how small it is in the grand scheme of things, but how hugely it has affected my life. It feels disproportionate, and I wish I could better understand why (and of course, fix it!)

I'm really sorry to hear what you're H's granddad went through too. This is the kind of thing, when I read it, I felt like somebody just reached into my chest and was squeezing my heart. I hurt for him and obviously, nobody should have to suffer through things like that.

And, great point about how much easier it is for people to be supportive of illnesses that are clearly visible and understood. Thanks!

DoYouTrustMe - Thanks for sharing that, and I'm sorry that ALL of your grandparents went through that (but glad that they survived and found each other!) I don't think that I had realized how much of an effect that survivor's guilt could have on people - I was just thinking of the awfulness of the experience itself.

Thanks Myrto. That's a really good point about learning to not talk about it, because other people get uncomfortable, but how unfortunate . I really do get the impulse to just bury the bad things, and keep doing what you have to do to survive and get through the day, but I'm sorry that people had that experience of being shut down by others. I really hadn't thought of the "how could we let this happen" aspect either - it's a bit hard to grasp, because when I read, it seems that there was so much deception going on at the time (and communication was so difficult compared to today), that a lot of people honestly had no idea what was happening until it was clearly too late. That was the impression that I got anyway

MissBella, thanks for the wikipedia link! I'll have to take a look (I want to go read it now, but I'm afraid if I'm away from the response window too long, all my typing will disappear, so I'll finish this first!) - and wow - interesting that it was already seen as "history" by the time you studied it in school. It sounds like the whole country really did want to just put it behind us?

Thanks Scarlet... it's interesting to hear about your fiance's grandmother and how she's managed to keep a sense of community around her! Times really are different in that way, and I agree, it's a downside of technology. I think we're losing something, and it's ironic in a way, because we DO get some new ways to connect via technology, like this forum. But, the face-to-face stuff seems to be harder... and even when people are there, they're not always 100% there (i.e. they may be checking their phones instead of connecting with the person in front of them!)