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Psychological Consequences of the Holocaust


Introduction

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Upon receiving freedom, the survivors of the Holocaust were essentially in shock and seemed to be lost. It was hard for them to return to civilian life and many of them didn’t know how to locate their families or start over with a new life. Once the West German government finally consented to compensate for the losses of these survivors, this compensation was hard to achieve and those who claimed they were experiencing negative psychological and emotional effects had to be verified by a psychiatrist.

Survivor Syndrome

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One such psychiatrist by the name of Chodoff met with survivors and thus created a “survivor syndrome” that most victims he observed seemed to suffer from.
According to Chodoff, the symptoms of the syndrome were:

Chronic depression with features of vigilant insomnia, nightmares during which fragments of the persecutory experiences recur, apathy, and social withdrawal.

Chronic anxiety accompanied by vegetative and psychophysiological symptoms.

Personality changes, especially a lowered threshold for stimulation.

Guilt

Isolation of affect

Memory disturbances

Avoidance of psychiatric help of an inability to verbalize traumatic events

One sort of explanation for this behavior could be the simple fact that the concentration camps these people were held in, were designed to kill off humans by the way of gas chambers and other torturous methods. According to many medical professionals, this ”survivor syndrome” has been seen among all of the people who were forced to live in these concentration camps regardless of their personalities and moods.

Behavior of survivors in hospitals

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One speculation about hospital behavior of holocaust survivors made by Dr. Cohen (statistician and psychologist) was that patients in the hospital behaved sort of sadistically in one of two ways. Either they made no demands of the healthcare providers or they were too demanding. Cohen also reports excessive discontent with body image among these patients, excessive grieving for dead family members, and a feeling of anxiety towards medical personnel whom they perceive as trying to kill them. Patients also exhibited and inability to trust medical professionals which Cohen attributed to impaired object relation.

Emotional effects of a Concentration Camp

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Three psychologists (Nathan, Eitinger & Winnick) examined a group of 157 concentration camp survivors who were long term patients in a psychiatric hospital located in Israel. Based on their findings they said: Most of the survivors have unusual symptoms than would be expected by someone who has just been exiled. Those in concentration camps exhibited symptoms such as anxiety, reduced self-esteem, withdrawal from social situations, lack of initiative, a lack of joy in life, and various other emotions.

It is evident that these camps have had a dramatic effect on the survivors and the lives they will lead after the war is over. However, there is still hope. One psychiatrist (A. Ornstein) suggests that the survivors who have preserved even some small amount of their emotional connection within themselves and with others will be able to reconnect and resume life at whatever point in their life cycle they were in when the war disrupted it.

Psychological effects on the children of survivors

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Through numerous research efforts and studies a general consensus has been that the people who survived the Holocaust are now seriously impacted by this experience. Their psychological functioning has been affected. This leads to their children. According to Dr. J. J. Sigal, “when individuals experience chronic deprivation or distortions in their psychological environment they will develop distortions in their capacities for human relations that will then hamper their ability to form healthy relationships with their children.”

Another doctor, by the name of Rakoff, reports that although a good amount of the survivors of the Holocaust are leading relatively normal lives, these long lasting effects from their Holocaust experiences will undoubtedly be passed on to their children who then suffer psychological setbacks themselves.

References