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Title

Judith S. Kestenberg, and Charlotte Kahn, eds. Children Surviving Persecution: An International Study of Trauma and Healing (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998)

Abstract

"This international study of children's experiences of organized persecution, explores the Holocaust and its aftermath as prototypical social trauma. The essays in this collection focus on long-term effects of trauma caused by organized persecution - children's experiences of the horror and terror of war, and on the coping mechanisms and reparative experiences, which mitigate and sometimes surmount the trauma ... Traumatized persons' feelings of shame and guilt as well as a sense of being different may prevail, and they may attribute great power to others, seek safety in isolation, or search for a rescuer. Nevertheless, as a group, the child survivors of the Holocaust have achieved remarkable success as adults."--Publisher description.

Contents

Preliminaries; Contents; Preface; Introduction; 1 The Background of Persecution and Its Aftermath; 2 Historical Trauma Psychohistorical Reflections on the Holocaust; 3 Adult Survivors Child Survivors and Children of Survivors; 4 Man Behind Walls; 5 Interviewing for Indemnification; 6 Impact on the Second and Third Generations; 7 Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in Hungary Between 1989 and 1994; 8 Child Survivors A Review; 9 Nazi Fathers; 10 The Persecution of Polish Children; 11 Yugoslavian Child Survivors; 12 German Jewish Identity; 13 Kindertransport A Case Study.

About the Author

Judith Ida Kestenberg (née Silberpfennig; 1910-1999) was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, she studied in Vienna. In 1937 she moved to the United States, where she spent her entire career.