History Flows Through Us by Roger Frie

Author:Roger Frie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

The uniqueness of the second generation

In the small sample of “psychohistorical figures” I interviewed between 1971 and 1973 and further supported by the next 40 years of clinical experience, the spectrum of characteristics is startling. On the one hand, it might be argued that there was a sampling bias toward similarity, i.e. a middle-class, educated group. On the other hand, the assumption that they came from similar backgrounds is false. The impact of history on the survivor and on family life was massive, but in different ways. It also involved the variable of life before the war. Parents came from varied cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, which led to complex differences: countries of origin and the socio-economic status of those countries of origin was a significant variable, as was urban vs. rural circumstances, and secular vs. religious. Some led lives of relative privilege before persecution, others led lives of hardship, and their persecution and losses, though massive, had different textures. After all, how does one distinguish, much less represent, the murder of just one loved one with everyone, between indifferent and sadistic brutality, protracted and short duration of physical suffering in a labor, concentration, or death camp, or the different circumstances of rescue and return? And despite the stereotypes of parental communication and the myths of silence, communication was itself varied and apparently little correlated with actual experiences of devastation and loss.

The second generation ranged from those who hold a strong conscious sense of their historical generation to those who reject any identification with survivorhood or history; from feeling completely shaped by history to denying any influence of their parent’s survivorhood. They range in character from being narrow, concrete, rigid, and fixed in their views, given to simplistic formulations; to nuanced, complex, individuals, reflecting an ability to take on many different points of view to identify with multiple roles and possibilities, including the conditions under which they could see themselves as becoming bystanders and perpetrators.

Children of survivors described varied patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication and had an extremely wide range of responses to what their parents told them. These responses included horror, pity, shame, a fear of inflicting pain or opening wounds, a desire to avoid, a desire to learn more, perception of parents as severely damaged, and being awed and inspired by perceptions of parental strength, endurance, and integrity. Their perceptions of parents ranged from devaluation to idealization. Their descriptions of parents spanned the dimensions of emotional availability, intrusiveness, over-protectiveness, separation, control, and experiencing parents as limiting or facilitating independence, living vicariously through them, and imposing their worldviews and beliefs. The latter was complicated by different layers of a role reversal, as immigrant parents depended on their children to be the interpreters of a new culture. The strongest evidence of a common theme was a positive one, the experience of complete devotion of parents for their children.

The worldviews of survivors’ children include beliefs that could be associated with historical imagery, feelings of personal insignificance, of being a little

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