Can Holocaust Trauma Affect 'Third Generation'?

Can Holocaust Trauma Affect 'Third Generation'?

Studies Debate Impact on Grandchildren of Survivors

By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Forward - September 5, 2012

Is learning about the Holocaust from your survivor grandparents more traumatic than learning about it from“ Schindler’s List”?

Apparently not, according to a new study by Perella Perlstein, herself an ultra-Orthodox granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

That wasn’t the result Perlstein expected when she began the study, conducted while she was a graduate student at Hofstra University. Her work examined the responses of ultra-Orthodox grandchildren of survivors to psychological tests designed to measure symptoms of secondary Holocaust trauma.

Perlstein’s results, published in July in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Traumatology, found that these survivor grandchildren responded no differently from other members of the ultra-Orthodox community when it came to the Holocaust.

This is just one entry in a growing, hotly contested field of research into the psychological impact on the so-called “third generation” — the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

One researcher is looking at how the Holocaust may have altered the way genes are expressed in the grandchildren of survivors. Another is building questionnaires to measure how Holocaust trauma has affected the family experiences of second-generation and third-generation descendants. Others have already concluded that the Holocaust has no indirect traumatic impact on the third generation.

Even the terms of the conversation are up for debate. Some experts dispute the notion that trauma can ever be experienced second or third hand. Others say that the experiences of Holocaust victims are so diverse that no broad characterizations can be made about trauma’s impact.

“We are not in the area of science here,” said Chaya Roth, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Illinois who has written on the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust memories. “We are in the area of hypotheses. So forget about truth.”

The study of the third generation is a relatively new field that has grown out of earlier research into the effects of the Holocaust on children of survivors. That work began in the late 1960s and early ’70s, concurrent with the fading of the taboos surrounding the discussion of the Holocaust and its psychological impact.

Some researchers at the time found individual cases suggesting that children of traumatized survivors could be at risk for symptoms of traumalike anxiety and depression. Others, who tried to repeat these findings in broader scientific studies, found less evidence to support the notion that trauma could be transmitted between generations.

The third generation has its own unique set of experiences, quite different from that of their parents. The second generation “grew up at a time when Holocaust survivors were shunned in society,” said Eva Fogelman, a therapist who has written extensively on the issue. “Grandchildren of survivors grew up at a time in society when Holocaust survivors had regained their sense of dignity…. We have a transformation from shame to pride in the third generation.”

As was the case with studies of the second generation, controlled epidemiological studies have so far found scant proof of intergenerational transmission of trauma onto the third generation.

One meta-analysis of the available research published in 2008 by an Israeli and two Dutch researchers found no evidence for what it called “tertiary traumatization.”

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Attachment & Human Development, recommend that third-generation offspring be “stimulated to search for the roots of their problems in other directions besides the Holocaust experience of their grandparents.”

Those skeptical findings have left some researchers undaunted.

Yael Danieli - Clinical Psychologist

Yael Danieli, a clinical psychologist who has researched and written on the children of Holocaust survivors, is currently working on developing a survey that will help measure the experiences of the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. The project, funded by a $50,000 grant facilitated by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the Anti-Defamation League, will create what Danieli says is the first measure of third-generation survivors’ experiences.

The survey, which is still in development, is headlined “Family Adaptation to Trauma.” It asks multiple-choice questions about family life among the descendants of survivors, and is designed for use in future studies by other researchers.

“The grandchildren literally forced us to look at them,” Danieli said. “It will be the first scientifically valid reliable measure of the experience.”

Other researchers are following different tracks.

Rachel Yehuda, PhD

Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is gathering subjects for a study that will examine whether the Holocaust could have actually changed how genes are expressed in the grandchildren of survivors.

Yehuda’s field, called epigenetics, rests on the notion that outside factors can change how traits are passed to children from their parents.

According to Yehuda, earlier studies have shown second-generation descendants to have a different capacity for stress than nondescendants of survivors. That could have been the result of an adaptive change triggered by the highly stressful experiences of their parents during the Holocaust.

Yehuda said that there are some case reports of third-generation descendants experiencing eating disorders and anxiety. Her current work could show whether those traits are broadly representative of the population.

“I think that [this research] should be done, because if there are intergenerational effects that last beyond one generation, it’s important to know,” Yehuda said. “It’s not going to just be about the Holocaust.”

The researchers who have found no evidence of intergenerational transmission remain skeptical.

The findings of the Attachment & Human Development paper comport with the results of two dissertations advised by Hofstra University professor Robert W. Motta, including Perlstein’s.

“I went into the studies expecting, as [the graduate students] did, that there would be transfer to the third generation,” Motta said. “But we didn’t find that in either study. Believe me, that is not what we were looking for and not what we expected.”

For some, the entire notion that trauma could affect people who didn’t directly experience it seems like pseudoscience.

“This is where the psychological psychobabble gets spread like wildfire,” Fogelman said. 

“Transmission of trauma? Trauma is not transmitted. People either experience trauma or they don’t experience trauma.”

The third generation themselves, for their part, aren’t interested in the academic debates over terminology, according to Leora Klein, a board member and founding member of 3GNY, a group for grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. They just want answers.

“There’s a need, an urgency to figure out where the Holocaust is now in our lives as descendants of survivors,” Klein. said “Luckily our parents were not born in a time of horror, but they were deeply, deeply, deeply affected by their parents’ experience.”

"Men or Rats" - Must Read Book Vicki Polin says

"Men or Rats" - Must Read Book Vicki Polin says

It's not often I read a book that is so compelling I couldn't put down. The book "Men or Rats" by Simonne Levi-Jameson is an incredible autobiography of Dr. Simonne Levi-Jameson as a child during the holocaust. See below for a more in-depth review of Levi-Jameson's book.

Cost $20.00 (US dollars). Make checks payable to: Children's Rights Foundation, Inc. ELPIDA, Dr. Simonne Jameson, 620 Mt. Aitken Rd., Sunbury, Victoria, Australia 3429

Click here for more books recommended by The Awareness Center.

Dr Simonne Jameson with her eldest son, Jean-Christophe Burckhardt.

Photo: Ingrid Shakenovsky

Out of the Darkness: The Story of Dr. Simonne Levi-Jameson

Out of the Darkness

By Lexi Landsman

Australia Jewish News - June 8, 2007

SHE was only 12, but she can still recall the rotten smell of the wood, the musty dry air, the dust, the perpetual darkness and the rats.

More than six decades later, Dr Simonne Jameson, who now lives in Melbourne, still cannot shake the memories of her three years living in hiding in an underground cellar of the National Library in Paris during the Holocaust.

She tries to forget about the daily rapes, the small food rations, the loneliness and the unwavering fear.

Instead, she focuses on the books, which she says “kept my sanity and gave me a refuge from reality”.

Dr Jameson’s parents chose her out of their three children to send into hiding, after a police commissioner convinced them that he would “protect” her.

Her parents fled with her younger brother and older sister to Bordeaux to escape deportation, leaving young Simonne behind.

Within days of hiding in the rat-infested cellar, the rapes by pedophile police began and continued daily for three years.

“I remember the books and the rats,” she recalls. “The books kept me alive. They gave me an escape from the pain and abuse, and gave me some hope and optimism.”

Dr Jameson says she always had a feeling that she would survive and so she found solace in the philosophical books, which were kept in the cellar. A particular favourite was Candide by French philosopher Voltaire, which she credits as helping her survive.

It was during those three years of living in captivity that Dr Jameson discovered her passion for psychotherapy, art and books.

Since then, Dr Jameson, now 79, has taken that passion and become a renowned psychotherapist, child psychologist, art critic, philanthropist and author.

She vowed from the moment she left the confines of the cellar that she would dedicate her life to helping children of abuse. And in 64 years, Dr Jameson has gone far beyond her word.

In 1981, she founded the Children’s Rights Foundation (CRF), which provides free therapeutic services to disadvantaged families, and later the Arts Sans Frontieres, an art gallery where all profits go towards helping abused children.

In 2003, she released a memoir of her experiences called Men or Rats. The book will be made into a Hollywood film later this year. Directed by Mark Medoff (producer of Children of a Lesser God and City of Joy), the film will star Thomas Haden Church, Anna Paquin and Alfred Molina. The role of Dr Jameson has yet to be cast.

“It’s good that people will be able to know that you can survive anything. I hope that the film will send a positive message.”

DR Jameson was born in 1928 in France in the annex of the National Library, where her father worked.

Twelve years later the place of her birth would become her prison.

“I had a very rich life before the war. I met lots of authors at the library and I was always a positive, trusting person. I was always optimistic,” she recalls.

Dr Jameson slept between two bookshelves in the library on a metal military bed. She was fed a small ration of bread and water each day. Some days she went without any food at all. The only human contact she had was with the French police officers who sexually abused her. And apart from the abuse, she was also fearful of the rats.

“The rats were very big and I feared that they would attack me one day but they never did. I think in some way, the rats adopted me as one of their own.”

In her first few months in the cellar, Dr Jameson became critically ill. She recalls overhearing a conversation between the officers discussing what they would do with her dead body.

“I never thought about escaping,” she explains. “One of the officers had shown me a bar of soap and he said that it was made of the fat from the Jews in Auschwitz. He told me I would become a bar of soap if I tried to leave. It haunted me.”

At one point, Dr Jameson considered giving up.

“I remember taking a piece of the mirror and thinking that I would cut my wrists, but something kept telling me that I would survive. So I didn’t.”

In the last six months of captivity, an elderly police officer was sent to feed her and started crying as soon as he found her. He let her out into the courtyard for the first time to get fresh air.

But, one week before she was freed, no-one came to feed her. She was starving and close to death.

When she was eventually freed in September 1944 by the elderly officer, Dr Jameson weighed 38 kilograms, had tuberculosis and couldn’t walk.

After being treated by a doctor and spending time in a sanatorium, she went back to the library where her father worked.

“I went back there with hope, and when I knocked on the door, it was my father who opened it. I couldn’t believe it. My family had been told that I had been deported. It was overwhelming to see them.”

Dr Jameson says that writing her book six decades after being freed was cathartic.

“I wrote my book at a time that I was not well I wanted it to be like a will that I would leave my children. It was very therapeutic.”

Last year, Dr Jameson went back to the cellar with the film crew who are expected to go into production later this year. She says she was shocked to find that nothing in the cellar had changed.

“I thought going back wouldn’t affect me after so many years. But it did and it brought back a lot of traumatic memories to see the books and the archives just as they had been. I stood there and I was 12 years old again.”

In her clinical life, Dr Jameson has developed an impressive curriculum vitae.

She studied psychoanalysis with Carl Jung, psychotherapy with Carl Rogers, psychology with Dr Jolande Jacobi and philosophy with Salvador Dali. She has diplomas in nutritional medicine, orthomolecular nutrition, clinical hypnosis, criminology and biofeedback.

She is a doctor of homeopathic medicine and alternative medicine. She’s studied the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction, as well as terminal illness, cancer therapy, meditation and palliative care.

She can speak five languages – French, Italian, English, Spanish and German. She’s won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal of France for services to humanity and was a nominee for Australian of the Year in 2006.

She’s currently the director of both the CRF and Arts Sans Frontieres and at 79, she shows little signs of slowing down.

She’s lived her life with a philosophy of forgiving and not forgetting, and focuses always on helping others move forward, instead of looking back.

“To be positive is the most important thing in life. If you don’t want to become sick yourself, you must forgive,” she explains. “If you hate people, you are not damaging them, you are damaging yourself. Forgiving and love are two very important parts of life.”

Later this month, she will give a series of talks in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide about her life and experiences with Carl Jung, Salvador Dali and Dr Jolande Jacobi. She will also hold an intimate all-day seminar in Sunbury, Victoria, next month.

Dr Jameson’s studies with the renowned theorists, particularly Dr Jacobi, were immensely influential.

She formed a special relationship with Dr Jacobi, a Jewish psychotherapist and founder of the Jung Institute, who Dr Jameson says got her through a difficult time.

“I learned a lot of psychology from Dr Jacobi, who was very compassionate woman and very similar to me. She was also a Jewish person who had suffered a lot. Without her I would not be who I am today.”

But Dr Jacobi was not only her tutor and therapist, she became her companion and fulfilled a maternal role.

“I had difficulty forgiving my mother for leaving me behind, but I did. I couldn’t understand why you would leave someone behind. I felt rejected by her and I felt accepted by Dr Jacobi. She changed my life in many ways.”

Dr Jameson says her lectures this month “pay homage” to Dr Jacobi.

Dr Jameson now lives in Melbourne and has five children, one that she was counseling and later adopted, and seven grandchildren. She says that her family “have played the most important role in [her] life”.

“They brought a lot of love into my life. It’s like a boomerang – when you give love, that’s what you get in return.”

And despite all the trauma she’s suffered, Dr Jameson’s message is one of optimism and faith in humanity.

“I am a very positive person. I believe in forgiveness I believe in the human race. Life is too short not to look forward. Life is beautiful, it’s important that we live to the fullest with a lot of passion.”

Out of the Darkness

By Lexi Landsman
Australia Jewish News
June 8, 2007

SHE was only 12, but she can still recall the rotten smell of the wood, the musty dry air, the dust, the perpetual darkness and the rats.

More than six decades later, Dr Simonne Jameson, who now lives in Melbourne, still cannot shake the memories of her three years living in hiding in an underground cellar of the National Library in Paris during the Holocaust.

She tries to forget about the daily rapes, the small food rations, the loneliness and the unwavering fear.

Instead, she focuses on the books, which she says “kept my sanity and gave me a refuge from reality”.

Dr Jameson’s parents chose her out of their three children to send into hiding, after a police commissioner convinced them that he would “protect” her.

Her parents fled with her younger brother and older sister to Bordeaux to escape deportation, leaving young Simonne behind.

Within days of hiding in the rat-infested cellar, the rapes by pedophile police began and continued daily for three years.

“I remember the books and the rats,” she recalls. “The books kept me alive. They gave me an escape from the pain and abuse, and gave me some hope and optimism.”

Dr Jameson says she always had a feeling that she would survive and so she found solace in the philosophical books, which were kept in the cellar. A particular favourite was Candide by French philosopher Voltaire, which she credits as helping her survive.

It was during those three years of living in captivity that Dr Jameson discovered her passion for psychotherapy, art and books.

Since then, Dr Jameson, now 79, has taken that passion and become a renowned psychotherapist, child psychologist, art critic, philanthropist and author.

She vowed from the moment she left the confines of the cellar that she would dedicate her life to helping children of abuse. And in 64 years, Dr Jameson has gone far beyond her word.

In 1981, she founded the Children’s Rights Foundation (CRF), which provides free therapeutic services to disadvantaged families, and later the Arts Sans Frontieres, an art gallery where all profits go towards helping abused children.

In 2003, she released a memoir of her experiences called Men or Rats. The book will be made into a Hollywood film later this year. Directed by Mark Medoff (producer of Children of a Lesser God and City of Joy), the film will star Thomas Haden Church, Anna Paquin and Alfred Molina. The role of Dr Jameson has yet to be cast.

“It’s good that people will be able to know that you can survive anything. I hope that the film will send a positive message.”

DR Jameson was born in 1928 in France in the annex of the National Library, where her father worked.

Twelve years later the place of her birth would become her prison.

“I had a very rich life before the war. I met lots of authors at the library and I was always a positive, trusting person. I was always optimistic,” she recalls.

Dr Jameson slept between two bookshelves in the library on a metal military bed. She was fed a small ration of bread and water each day. Some days she went without any food at all. The only human contact she had was with the French police officers who sexually abused her. And apart from the abuse, she was also fearful of the rats.

“The rats were very big and I feared that they would attack me one day but they never did. I think in some way, the rats adopted me as one of their own.”

In her first few months in the cellar, Dr Jameson became critically ill. She recalls overhearing a conversation between the officers discussing what they would do with her dead body.

“I never thought about escaping,” she explains. “One of the officers had shown me a bar of soap and he said that it was made of the fat from the Jews in Auschwitz. He told me I would become a bar of soap if I tried to leave. It haunted me.”

At one point, Dr Jameson considered giving up.

“I remember taking a piece of the mirror and thinking that I would cut my wrists, but something kept telling me that I would survive. So I didn’t.”

In the last six months of captivity, an elderly police officer was sent to feed her and started crying as soon as he found her. He let her out into the courtyard for the first time to get fresh air.

But, one week before she was freed, no-one came to feed her. She was starving and close to death.

When she was eventually freed in September 1944 by the elderly officer, Dr Jameson weighed 38 kilograms, had tuberculosis and couldn’t walk.

After being treated by a doctor and spending time in a sanatorium, she went back to the library where her father worked.

“I went back there with hope, and when I knocked on the door, it was my father who opened it. I couldn’t believe it. My family had been told that I had been deported. It was overwhelming to see them.”

Dr Jameson says that writing her book six decades after being freed was cathartic.

“I wrote my book at a time that I was not well I wanted it to be like a will that I would leave my children. It was very therapeutic.”

Last year, Dr Jameson went back to the cellar with the film crew who are expected to go into production later this year. She says she was shocked to find that nothing in the cellar had changed.

“I thought going back wouldn’t affect me after so many years. But it did and it brought back a lot of traumatic memories to see the books and the archives just as they had been. I stood there and I was 12 years old again.”

In her clinical life, Dr Jameson has developed an impressive curriculum vitae.

She studied psychoanalysis with Carl Jung, psychotherapy with Carl Rogers, psychology with Dr Jolande Jacobi and philosophy with Salvador Dali. She has diplomas in nutritional medicine, orthomolecular nutrition, clinical hypnosis, criminology and biofeedback.

She is a doctor of homeopathic medicine and alternative medicine. She’s studied the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction, as well as terminal illness, cancer therapy, meditation and palliative care.

She can speak five languages – French, Italian, English, Spanish and German. She’s won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal of France for services to humanity and was a nominee for Australian of the Year in 2006.

She’s currently the director of both the CRF and Arts Sans Frontieres and at 79, she shows little signs of slowing down.

She’s lived her life with a philosophy of forgiving and not forgetting, and focuses always on helping others move forward, instead of looking back.

“To be positive is the most important thing in life. If you don’t want to become sick yourself, you must forgive,” she explains. “If you hate people, you are not damaging them, you are damaging yourself. Forgiving and love are two very important parts of life.”

Later this month, she will give a series of talks in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide about her life and experiences with Carl Jung, Salvador Dali and Dr Jolande Jacobi. She will also hold an intimate all-day seminar in Sunbury, Victoria, next month.

Dr Jameson’s studies with the renowned theorists, particularly Dr Jacobi, were immensely influential.

She formed a special relationship with Dr Jacobi, a Jewish psychotherapist and founder of the Jung Institute, who Dr Jameson says got her through a difficult time.

“I learned a lot of psychology from Dr Jacobi, who was very compassionate woman and very similar to me. She was also a Jewish person who had suffered a lot. Without her I would not be who I am today.”

But Dr Jacobi was not only her tutor and therapist, she became her companion and fulfilled a maternal role.

“I had difficulty forgiving my mother for leaving me behind, but I did. I couldn’t understand why you would leave someone behind. I felt rejected by her and I felt accepted by Dr Jacobi. She changed my life in many ways.”

Dr Jameson says her lectures this month “pay homage” to Dr Jacobi.

Dr Jameson now lives in Melbourne and has five children, one that she was counseling and later adopted, and seven grandchildren. She says that her family “have played the most important role in [her] life”.

“They brought a lot of love into my life. It’s like a boomerang – when you give love, that’s what you get in return.”

And despite all the trauma she’s suffered, Dr Jameson’s message is one of optimism and faith in humanity.

“I am a very positive person. I believe in forgiveness I believe in the human race. Life is too short not to look forward. Life is beautiful, it’s important that we live to the fullest with a lot of passion.”

Surviving Incest in a Holocaust Family

Surviving Incest in a Holocaust Family
by Lilith Goldberg
Lilith Magazine - January, 1993

On Friday nights, I light the Sabbath candles and recite the ancient blessing of thanks to God. I am alone in my contemplation of the spirit, eating in a shrouded silence. Through the loneliness of this weekly ritual, I mourn the loss of my family - the loss of my biological connectedness. Like my parents before me, I am a Holocaust survivor, unwittingly exposed to intense human evil. It is an irony of my life that there are some memories, that keep me alive, just as others challenge my desire to keep breathing, moving, feeling, existing.

I remember Nazi uniforms, barbed wire, gas ovens and bloodied carcasses. These horrifying images, scenery of an earlier era, were implanted upon me as a child. My father often forced me to act as the "humiliated,"introducing me to Jewish bondage in a Nazi world, child bondage in a grown-up world. I was raped many times as a child - the penis hard, pressuring, pumping, burning my throat, ripping my vagina, my anus, breaking my heart, my trust in any adult.

I sought out explanations for my world, but none were available. Jewish families were depicted only as the haven, the refuge, the place of safety when one was confronted by antisemitism. I could never figure out where to run when the Jewish father raped his Jewish daughter...

When I finally gathered the courage to leave home at age 17, my father called me the worst name he knew: TRAITOR. The accusation was perfectly consistent with my father’s Holocaust orientation.
After the loss of all but two of the one hundred mem bers of his extended family, anyone who left the fold voluntarily could be considered nothing less.

Intellectually, I understand that my father - by doing to me exactly what had been done to him in the camps - was expressing cathartically his own pain and degradation. He was able to relive his experiences in a situation where he had control. Instead of being the child prostitute for the Gestapo, he was now the master himself....

While my father was truly a victim I still cannot forgive him his violations upon my body. I am filled with rage that I was made to suffer as I did.

There was a time when I assumed that my father was a rapist because of the Holocaust. From my discussions with other children of Holocaust survivors, I learned that many men in situations like my father’s lived through the camps and did not sexually abuse their daughters. I can therefore no longer accept the Holocaust as an excuse for my own victimization.

It is true that after six years of slave labor, my father had an obsessive need to control. Because he is a male adult in a male dom inated, adult oriented society, he was able to exercise his privilege over us, his young female children. Had we lived in a society that empowered women and children, perhaps my father’s deep seated need to control would have fond a different "socially appropriate"outlet.

I often have flashbacks of specific childhood moments. When I’m having sex, I remember scenes from early rapes; I have many nightmares; as I simply go about life, reading, shopping, eating, I frequently have momentary auditory or visual memories. I cringe at the sight of uniforms, at the sound of police sirens. To this day I am always early for meetings, wanting to check things out, make sure that I will not be in danger once a large group of people gather. Analyzing the parallels of incest and Holocaust survivorship, I recognize how my father and I are mirrored reflections of one another. Because my father survived genocide, he feels incredibly guilty. What was it about him that caused him to live, while his relations perished? Similarly, whenever I think of my sisters still living at home, I shudder and feel burdened by an enormous weight. How did I manage to escape the prison that holds them still? Why have I not tried harder to rescue them? My father and I also share a sense that danger is imminent, that it’s not safe to give oneself up fully to the present. Vigilance is ever with us. The very fact that my father lives is a threat to me. Even if I choose never again to attend a family get- together, still, knowing that my father is alive and well means fundamentally that I am never at peace, always at risk. Another similarity between my father’s ex perience and my own is that we both lacked models of resistance. My father did not know, nor did I until recently, that Jews fought back in the ghettos and concentration camps. As an incest survivor, I too knew nothing of valiant girls or women who fought back, who killed their violators. Finally, both Holocaust and incest survi vors cope with "revisionists"- those who deny that our experience was real. Neo- Nazis insist that the Holocaust is a hoax. My mother tells me that my sexual abuse is in my imagination. These two Hells are so horrific that not only oppressors and oppressed, but sometimes observers as well obliterate all memories.

Betrayal is another Holocaust/incest similarity. Holocaust survivors often talk of being betrayed by other Jews. Incest, of course, is frequently a betrayal of the most intimate human relationship, of parent to child. If those responsible for our well being choose to harm us instead, then to whom should we turn for emotional support? If not to our own mothers and fathers, then to whom?

So, you see, because of the traumatic events that both my father and I lived through, our psychological patterning is eerily similar. We forget; we deny; we remember; we relive; and then, we forget again. And, of course, it was easy for me to "forget"on a daily basis, because no one at school, or at synagogue, not even social workers, really wanted to hear about incest. Though I desperately sent out distress signals, I was told, over and over, in ways both convert and overt; ‘This doesn’t happen in Jewish families.

There was no one who would listen to the secrets of my soul. On my own, with no sympathetic other, I could do no better than "forget". By the time I was an adult and had retrieved memories of the perversities I’d endured, I could not bring myself to describe these horrors to anyone. Even in an incest survivor’s group, I deliberately withheld details of my childhood traumas. It was too painful to be the "worst case", to receive the pity of those only slightly less abused than myself.

Recently I joined a group of daughters of Holocaust survivors, and to my surprise I encountered a number of women who were raped by their fathers in contexts very similar to mine. Together we examine and re-examine; we journey towards our deeper selves in great trepidation. Because of the support I feel from these women, I am slowly discovering the power of speaking out, of writing about my experience. I still often feel awash in my own shame when I articulate my pain. I still feel guilt ridden, immersed in the suffering of an earlier era, but even as I write this, I move towards recognizing that the agony that my parents endured does not negate my own agony.
And weekly I light the Sabbath candles and recite the ancient words, continuing to bless whatever that spirit is that keeps me moving feeling, existing, alive.
The author of this article was born Chava (Eve) but she changed her name to Lilith in 1975 at the age of 17.