Panel Presentation:
• Pathways to Healing Transgenerational Holocaust Trauma
Panelists: Eva Fogelman, Ira Brenner, and Helene Bass-Wischelhaus
(120 min)

Abstract:

Psychohistorian Judith Kestenberg was pioneer in raising consciousness about the psychological impact of the Holocaust on the second generation of Holocaust survivors and on Holocaust child survivors. She was instrumental in challenging the denial that was pervasive among psychoanalysts who were treating these populations well into 1970s. In 1975, after seven years of negotiations, the leaders of the American Psychoanalytic Association finally agreed to establish the Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of the Holocaust on the Second Generation co-chaired by Martin S. Bergmann, Milton E. Jucovy and Judith Kestenberg. In the meantime, Kestenberg organized a group of analysts that met on their own to present case material. Presenter Ira Brenner, who now chairs the study group, will discuss Kestenberg’s unique contributions to transgenerational trauma of second generation. When mental-health professionals can understand the nuances of massive collective historical trauma on the second generation, their interpretation to patients leads to a transformative healing.

In 1981, Kestenberg was instrumental in making psychoanalysts aware that Holocaust child survivors’ trauma was ignored by adult survivors, the German reparation system, and by psychoanalysts. Along with her husband, Milton Kestenberg, they started to interview Jewish and non-Jewish children, under the age of 13 at the start of Nazi persecution. These initial interviews led to “rap groups,” organizations, conferences and international gatherings. Holocaust child survivors acquired an identity, a sense of belonging, validation for their suffering, pathway to healing, creative outlets, and German reparations. Eva Fogelman who worked closely with the Kestenbergs will discuss from being invisible to being a voice to acknowledge persecution of children in genocide. Helene Bass-Wischelhaus will explore the transformation to resilience by focusing on different themes of identity, loss, relationships, alienation, lost childhood, occupations, aging, coping and adaptation that are different for child survivors from adult survivors.

The clinical generational divide and the cultural milieu in which Holocaust child survivors and second generation of Holocaust survivors lived in after liberation is of utmost important for psychohistorians. Not only is the childhood before the Holocaust important, but also external environment in which one resided before and after the Holocaust. Interventions with a multidimensional approach in mind will be a light to breaking the cycle of transgenerational trauma.

Keywords: Holocaust child survivors, Judith Kestenberg, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, second generation, survivor identity, transformative healing, transgenerational trauma

Short Bios:

Eva Fogelman, PhD, is a social psychologist, a psychotherapist in private practice in New York, a filmmaker, and the author of the award-winning Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (1995). She was Co-Founder and Co-Director of Psychotherapy with Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas, TIMH. She was the Founding Director of the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, ADL (ne Jewish Foundation for the Righteous). She is currently the Co-Director of Child Development Research. She moderates the podcast The Blue Card Stories of the Holocaust: Overcoming Historical Traumas and a Zoom program, “Transforming Moments: Second Generation of Holocaust Survivors,” for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.  She can be reached at .

Ira Brenner, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Sidney Kimmel Medical School at Thomas Jefferson University as well as Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has a special interest in psychic trauma and has authored over 100 publications and six books. He can be contacted at .

Helene Bass-Wischelhaus, MSW, PhD, President of Child Development Research; Co-Chair of CDR’s Holocaust project, the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children, studying the effects of trauma on Child Survivors of the Holocaust; Senior Member and Faculty – National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis; The Psychoanalytic Review – Editor; Former faculty at Adelphi University School of Social Work. She can be reached by email .