Child survivors of the Holocaust: psychological adaptations to survival

This paper addresses the means by which children who survived the Holocaust made sense of their survival in later years. Inevitably, these children, now adults, have lived their lives with a series of perplexing questions and fragmented memories. The normal developmental tasks of growing up were mutilated beyond recognition by the traumas of loss and grief, danger and fear, hatred and chaos. The awesome task faced by child survivors included the reconstruction of a terrible past into a sensible present. In order to imbue life with meaning, a sense of continuous self had to be derived from the most fragile and discontinuous beginnings. The authors suggest that over a lifetime the child victim has to struggle with three fundamental questions: 1) Why me? 2) Since it happened to me, how shall I live my life? 3) In living life, what must I do with my grief and my memories? These three inextricable questions are discussed.