Holding on to Humanity-The Message of Holocaust Survivors

by Davidson, Shamai; Charny, Israel W.

• ISBN13: 9780814715130
• ISBN10: 0814715133
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-06-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

The effects of the Holocaust on those who survived it are immeasurable. How can one experience the trauma of the concentration camps--being reduced to a helpless witness of the brutality of torture, medical experiments, and execution of those around you--how can one survive this and remain the same? In many ways the Holocaust has drastically effected those who survived, and in Holding on to Humanity Shamai Davidson explores the complex results of this dehumanizing experience.As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in Israel, Davidson spent 30 years working with this special group, trying to understand the nature of their experience. Uniquely skillful in evoking from survivors their most silenced stories, Davidson concentrated on giving them voice and recorded memory. Davidson worked on this book for many years--since 1972 it was a dream of his to write an authoritative work on the life experiences of the Holocaust survivors and their families--but unfortunately Davidson died in 1986 at the age of 59. This book is the result of extensive effort by Israel W. Charny to complete the project at the request of Davidson's widow, Jenny Davidson.Shamai Davidson was born in 1926 in Dublin. In his youth he witnessed from afar the Nazi rise to power and the death of his aunts and cousins in the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz, and the gas chambers of Treblinka. Davidson studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and completed his psychiatric residency at Oxford University Medical School in 1955, after which Davidson secured a position as a psychiatrist at Talbieh Psychiatric Hospital in Jerusalem. It is at this point that he encountered the subject that he would pursue for the remainder of his life. Davidson cofounded the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide along with Israel W. Charny and Elie Wiesel, and worked as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, treating Holocaust survivors, until his death.

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction: Shamai Davidson's Vision of Survivors
Author's Preface: Notes of Self-Analysis: Shamai Davidson's Thoughts on Himself and the Holocaust	p. 1
Introductory Statement: On the Difficulty of Writing and Research about the Holocaust and Survival	p. 7
On Relating to Traumatized/Persecuted People	p. 19
The Clinical Effects of Massive Psychic Trauma	p. 28
Surviving during the Holocaust and Afterwards: The Post-Liberation Experience	p. 55
The Transmission of Psychopathology in Families of Concentration Camp Survivors	p. 88
Group Formation and Human Reciprocity in the Nazi Concentration Camps	p. 121
Reflections on Survival and Some Observations on Survivors in Israel, Germany, and the United States	p. 143
Mourning and the Holocaust Survivor: Bereavement in Israel from War, Holocaust, and Terror	p. 160
Recovery and Integration in the Life Cycle of the Individual and the Collective	p. 189
Encounter: The Survivor versus Society	p. 207
Notes and References	p. 215
Selected Publications of Shamai Davidson on Holocaust Survivors and Their Families	p. 225
A Biographical Note	p. 227
Name Index	p. 233
Subject Index	p. 237
About the Editor	p. 243
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