Confronting Memory in the Psychotherapy of Child Survivors of the Holocaust Robert Krell, M.D. John Popular wisdom has it that events fade from memory with time. What if memory grows stronger with age and certain experiences? Let us turn to a child survivor who endured certain experiences and put them aside for forty years. His first conscious recounting of those events takes place in a therapeutic context. His memories are vague and fragmented but retrievable. He then joins the support group and also begins to tell his story to children in an educational context. At each telling he surprises (sometimes shocks) himself with a recollection long submerged. His memory at age 52 was not nearly so complete as it was at age 60. John was born in 1938 in Hungary. He recalls his mother's funeral when he was 3 years old. She died a natural death. He was 5 years old when war broke out. He was told after the war that his home was broken into and his father and grandmother murdered. He has no recall of this, although others have told him he was there or nearby. He does recall walking to some kind of concentration camp where he was washed with soap said to be made from Jewish fat. He remembered being undressed to go into a gas chamber that he thinks failed to work. A soldier who was supposed to kill them let them go. They somehow returned home, he and his stepmother, where he waited daily for the return of his father (whom he knew had been killed, perhaps having witnessed the incident). Of his father's siblings he seemed to know that at least seven of them had been murdered. A surviving aunt arranged for him to go to Canada, since there was no one to look after him. He was in an orphanage, became a street kid, and in Canada moved from foster home to foster home. His only stability came from a group of refugee children like himself and from a measure of success at work. He married and divorced and remains in touch with his two children. However, he describes a pervasive loneliness and an explicable sadness for his entire adult life. His foster parents had told him of his screams and nightmares, which lasted at least five years. He thinks he remained in "deep shock" and therefore could not recapture the circumstances of his father's death. His question to me: "Are there other children like me?" After about a dozen sessions, John asked a series of rhetorical questions born of deep-seated rage. "How would you like it if this happened to you? Your grandmother is hung upside down and shot. I don't want to remember it." John joined a child-survivor group, a leaderless support group where some tell their stories for the first time. Several years as a member led John to publish his story based upon recollections offered to the group. He states that the funeral of his mother at age 3 was his first memory of childhood. "But after that, I can recall nearly everything." This account written seven years after therapy is entirely consistent with earlier information gathered in the sessions. The only changes are in the sequencing of the account, the details, and the astonishing recall of the events that had been blocked from memory. He had, in fact, not seen the killings. The Hungarian police came to his home, whisked him and his stepmother away, and later walked them back and forced them to view the bodies, those of his father and grandmother, wrapped in white sheets. "This event so traumatized me that I had no memory of it for the next forty years." The details of his story were also more accurate. John's father had eight brothers and sisters of whom three survived. The gas chamber first recalled was now described as a military barracks nicknamed "The Slaughterhouse." No one who entered returned. Toward the end of the war John was herded into it with fifty or sixty other inmates and smoke was pumped in. They were being suffocated and suddenly he was lifted out through a window, which was improperly sealed. He then escaped on the run. Reunited with his beloved stepmother, she was too disturbed after her experiences to look after him. So began his journey via orphanages and placements to Canada where he finally settled. Discussion The question of memory in a traumatic childhood is tricky. A nontraumatic childhood is as it should be, safe, predictable, secure - what is there to remember? Trauma of a severe and frightening variety insinuates itself early and can be recaptured by a willing listener with little or no prompting. The recall of sounds, smells, and touch serves as a helpful trigger to memory. (8) One of the problems of child survivors was the postwar adult response that summarily negated the childhood experiences (of hiding particularly) as of little consequence compared to the concentration camps; trivialized memory basically by stating that the children were lucky not to remember too much - "You were too young to remember;" and exhorted the children who "claimed" to remember not to talk of it but to "Get on with your life." Many obediently agreed not to remember and indeed got on with life. Then why the dreams, the nightmares, the terrors? They too were set aside, in many instances, for decades. However, the power of memory surrounding Holocaust experiences proved too great in the long run. Few child survivors do not sooner or later experience the return of childhood memories. The problem here is that the presentation of such fragments of memory is sometimes disguised as the familiar symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, or depressive episodes. Treatment of symptoms driven by hidden memories without sufficient exploration is unlikely to succeed. Margaret's chronic grief, one triggered by the loss of two much-loved parents, defied her initial psychiatric treatment, both on an individual and group basis for three years. Medications helped not at all except for sleep. Her anxieties related to loss, the fuel to her bereavement, abated when she was able to relate her recent losses to her early losses. Jacques's feelings of worthlessness and lack of self-esteem following three failed relationships showed as depressive episodes which were not at all amenable to antidepressants. The core of his problem related to his absence of memory due to his traumatic experiences unfolding during a preverbal period. A postwar attempt to give voice to these feelings led to a serious misinterpretation, not of the reality of his mother's abandonment, but of her purpose in doing so - the saving of his life. Jacques is clawing his way back to self-worth, with help. John's memory was remarkably accurate in two separate tellings. His memories at age 60 were a more solid version of his recall at age 52, which emerged in therapy after blocking those memories for a full forty years. His symptoms were in the area of addictive habits and anxieties about his children and his relationship to them. The self-revelation of knowing much better who he was, what he endured, and his personal resilience gave him renewed pride in having overcome incredible obstacles toward becoming a quite decent person and devoted father. His comfort level since confronting memory is much improved. I would urge any and all child survivors of the Holocaust to find a way in which to relate their story - to other child survivors, to a knowledgeable therapist, to a documentation project, for each has the potential for healing the pain of memories untold. (9) [Page 3 of 3] References 8. Suedfeld, Peter; Krell, Robert; Wiebe, Robyn E. and Steel, Gary D. (1997). Coping strategies in the narratives of Holocaust survivors. Anxiety, Stress and Coping 10: 153-179. 9. Krell, Robert (1985). Therapeutic value of documenting child survivors. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 24(4): 397-400.