Postmemories of joy? Children of Holocaust survivors and alternative family memories

Memories of positivities

In an attempt to go beyond trauma, this article considers what Ann Rigney (2018) recently termed “memories of positivities” [my emphasis]. In her work on the collective memory of the Paris Commune of 1871, Rigney (2018) refers to “memories of hope” as an example of a memory of positivity. Certain social movements and revolutions may create hopeful or otherwise positive cultural memories, even if their success is short lived. While Rigney’s focus is on the more collective, societal level, I suggest that her concept of memories of positivities is easily transposed to a micro, individual level. Certainly, if parents can transmit memories of trauma or trauma itself, it seems highly plausible that they can also transmit memories of positivities.

A focus on postmemories of positivities requires the same kind of critical scrutiny that should be applied to studying trauma. To focus on positive memories of COS does not imply imposing a rose-colored lens to produce images of happy, intact, heteronormative, nuclear families living the American Dream. Rather, these are families in which the horrendous and traumatic histories of Holocaust survivor-parents are usually present in some form, but may be joined by affirming memories such as joy, affection, humor, love, or happiness. These memories of positivities do not negate memories of trauma, but in many cases, they are just as prominent if not more so.

It is important to acknowledge that some survivors were irrevocably traumatized by their Holocaust experiences and created highly dysfunctional family relationships that left severe, long-lasting emotional scars among their offspring. My approach does not downplay their suffering. But while some literatures presume a widespread intergenerational transmission of trauma among COS, other research suggests that highly damaged and traumatized individuals only constitute a minority of the second generation. Robust research using control groups in multiple countries has never found any significant difference between COS and their peers in terms of emotions connected to trauma ³ (van IJzendoorn et al., 2003).

More qualitatively oriented psychologists Aaron Hass (1990) and Natan Kellermann (1999) assert that only a small minority of COS are deeply wounded and emotionally damaged. In other words, the vast majority of COS are emotionally healthy. Since the US does not have any official count of Holocaust survivors or their children as does the Israeli state, it is impossible to draw a random sample in order to know the extent to which the Hass’ and Kellerman’s assertions are correct. Their claim, however, seems highly plausible.

Postmemory

Postmemory is the relationship that the “generation after” the Holocaust “bears to the personal, collective and cultural trauma or transformation of those who came before” (Hirsch, 2008: 106). Building on both the memory and history literature and the trauma studies literature, ⁴ Marianne Hirsch (2001) created this concept to characterize

the experience of those, who, like me, have grown up dominated by narrative that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are displaced by the powerful stories of the previous generation, shaped by monumental traumatic events that resist understanding and integration. (p. 12)

Although Hirsch (1997) initially coupled postmemory with the Holocaust, she later expanded it to those offspring whose parents experienced any collective trauma, ⁵ since they too “inherit a horrific, unknown, and unknowable past that their parents were not meant to survive” (2012: p. 34). Those in the second generation are the guardians of this memory and have a familial sense of “ownership and protectiveness” (Hirsch, 2008: 104). ⁶ Hirsch (2012: 34) asserts that the “fiction, art, memoir and testimony” produced by this second generation “are shaped by the attempt to represent the long-term effects of living in close proximity to the pain, depression, and dissociation of persons who have witnessed and survived massive historical trauma.” However, as I understand Hirsch, carrying the postmemory of parents’ trauma does not automatically create trauma in the offspring themselves; these are two separate phenomena. ⁷

Despite the very personal connection to these memories which are inherited “vertically” through intergenerational transmission (Crownshaw, 2010: v), the term postmemory is meant to convey “its temporal and qualitative difference” from survivor memory, “its secondary or second-generation quality, its basis in displacement, its vicariousness and belatedness” (Hirsch, 2001: 9). Postmemory is very personal and, at the same time, it is memory once removed, since it is actually parents’ memories, carried by their offspring. Postmemory resonates deeply with me personally and intellectually. As the daughter and granddaughter of German-Jewish refugees who fled in the 1930s, postmemory names some deeply internal and complicated emotions; it acknowledges foundations of identity that are usually invisible.

Conceptually, postmemory specifies a particular generational perspective which otherwise would go unnoticed. Karl Mannheim (1952) elucidated the sociological importance of an individual’s generational location in terms of experiencing significant historical events along with specific sociocultural values and practices (Assmann, 2016: 14; Elder, 1999). The concept of postmemory situates individuals within a particular generation and a broader sociopolitical context. In this case, COS in the United States are part of the Baby Boomer generation who lived through the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s; this context undoubtedly affected the development of their postmemory. This broader structural environment is highly relevant for understanding how the second generation named and claimed their identity and spoke about their experiences (Stein, 2014).

Methodology and data

Using methodological tools that differ considerably from Hirsch’s, I want to ascertain if it is possible to somehow empirically encapsulate postmemory, at least partially. Testimonies and narratives reflect the most literal part of postmemory but certainly not the full scope and range. Still, I will draw on the narratives from interviews with 35 COS. These videoed interviews can reflect only what individuals are conscious of, able to articulate verbally and through body language, and willing to share. Even though Hirsch (2016: 107) claims that postmemory defies “narrative construction” and “exceeds comprehension,” it seems an important and worthwhile interdisciplinary effort to try to locate and observe it, however imperfect.

Based on Hirsch’s (2008) definition, I capture postmemory in terms of (1) how COS were told their parents’ histories or the form of telling, (2) what they were told about their parents’ experiences, or the content, and (3) when they were told, or the timing, in terms of age and life-cycle status. Finally, before delving into the narratives, it is important to acknowledge that feminist scholars as well as sociologists view individuals as social agents rather than passive victims who, depending upon the circumstances, have some agency. ⁸ As social agents, survivor-parents are aware of their actions to some degree, and may be involved in deliberately creating more positive family practices. This is decidedly different from the view that the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its resultant victimization are inevitable. The three facets mentioned above reflect whether parents used their agency to manage and control the timing, format, and content of their Holocaust histories when telling their children. Thus, parents’ agency is central in this analysis of postmemory.

Parents who spoke about the Holocaust

We will begin with one end of the continuum—parents who spoke a lot about the Holocaust. Interestingly, asked when they learned about the Holocaust, many COS could not recall a time when they didn’t know about the connection between parents and the Holocaust. “I don’t remember ever NOT knowing” several stated, or some rendition thereof. For these COS, their parents’ Holocaust history was simply part of their childhood memories in a natural manner. In some cases, these particular COS knew very early on that their parents survived something “bad” called “camp” or “the Holocaust” without really knowing what that meant. “I knew from very young that something terrible had happened to her like a Holocaust prison, that it had something to do with being Jewish. I knew it was terrible,” explained Rachel.

In only one case, there was incessant talk about the Holocaust. And, it was problematic. Peter explained that his mother and grandmother talked about the Holocaust constantly, referring to Terezenstadt “like a bad summer camp.” He feels that they used their stories to “guilt their children into appreciating what they had.” Peter’s case was more complicated because he was 10 years old when his father died. His early death constituted a major loss, but Peter was very close to his grandmother which most likely helped him through his childhood. This example has both negative and positive elements and it is unclear whether Peter feels traumatized.

For other COS, the constancy of the Shoah in their lives was not necessarily an emotional burden. Debra focused mostly on her late survivor-father during the interview. Her father and his brother survived the war hiding in the forests and stayed together throughout the war. They were the only survivors of their immediate and extended family. It seems that after the war, they continued their close connection.

Debra said that her father

always talked about his experiences; it was part of growing up. I never felt like it was too much … [He] always, always, always talked about his experiences during the war. Whether he walked, we walked together or at dinnertime. It was very much part of growing up. He kept it alive through his stories. (italics, my emphasis)

Her father would tell her, “‘I feel that you’re with me.’ I was just kind of there. I couldn’t get enough of his life.” Since his death, Debra and her mother continued to talk about her father’s stories all the time.

Debra was the only COS who wept during much of the interview explaining that she gets very emotional thinking about what he went through. However, she clarified that her tears came from sadness, not because she was unhappy. Debra clearly carried some of her father’s pain and loss and although it was sad, it was a way for her to feel close to him now that he’s dead. Thus, I hesitate to categorize her feelings as negative or problematic because of the way she expresses her love of and admiration for him. But because of her sadness, perhaps this is more of a “mixed” case since there are also strong family relationships.

Like Debra’s father, Dana’s father spoke about his experiences frequently but it also does not seem to be a case of incessant talking about it or talking about it in a way that left no room for his children. Dana explains that her father was “always very open about it. He’d tell a story when something reminded him of it.” Her father spoke about the Holocaust in a matter-of-fact manner and was not emotional when he made such statements. If they were eating out, “he’d say ‘I wish I had had that in the bunker’.” Unlike Peter’s experience, Dana’s father did not intend to induce gratitude or guilt from his children. Due to the way he integrated these comments throughout daily life, the Holocaust was normalized in a way that was not belittling of or frightening for his children. “I didn’t realize that other parents weren’t like that,” she stated.

Other survivor-parents did not necessarily speak about their past in everyday discourse but answered their children’s questions openly, with age-appropriate responses. Like Dana’s father, they spoke about it sometimes, but not all the time; they also had the ability to control their emotions and to use their judgment. Heidi recounted,

As kids, we’d ask a question, she’d answer it, and the discussion would move on. It was never told with a lot of emotion, just the facts … I could hear it non-emotionally, ‘ok, move on, pass the peanut butter; that discussion is over.’ It wasn’t important; it wasn’t central to who she was. It was incidental. (my emphasis)

Heidi likely conjured up the example of peanut butter to make her point about the banality of the situation. The image she paints for us is rare in this literature—a child asks a question about the Holocaust and the parent responds with an age-appropriate explanation that the child can understand and life simply continues as usual. There is no tension, no shutting down the child, and no drama. Heidi’s mother’s agency is reflected in her ability to control and manage her history. The content of Heidi’s postmemory cannot be uncoupled from the manner in which her mother provided this information about her history, and the marginal role her survivor status played in her mother’s life. Thus, even though Heidi does have postmemories, she is not heavily burdened by her mother’s trauma, it seems, because of her mother’s matter-of-fact style.

Some parents put a creative spin on their stories to make them more age-appropriate be it through humor, adventure, or some other invention. Ever since she was very young, Evelyn’s father told her bedtime stories, turning his day-to-day work in the camps into adventures. “… they did different things every day. They would dig ditches, they had very little to eat. He embellished it with fairytale-like details to make it sound more like an adventure,” adding donkeys to the stories.

“I don’t think it was so bad as a child [speaking about herself]; it was almost like an adventure that he had. He did tell me some things that were disturbing.” It is unclear how old Evelyn was when she heard about the disturbing aspects but her father seems to have been able to harness his trauma for the most part. Although he may have included some stories that were not age appropriate, Evelyn’s full narrative does not suggest that she was haunted by these stories which constitute her postmemory.

Mina’s father also told his story like it was an adventure. Her grandfather had created an escape route above the stove that went to the attic and led outdoors. Early one morning, her grandfather woke up her father and his brother so that they could escape through the attic and run to the woods where they survived for 2 years. Her father told his stories as great adventures all while they fought to survive—about bullets flying past them, spending the day hiding in a swamp, foraging for mushrooms, drinking grain alcohol, hiding in a cart, being face-to-face with a Russian Christian, and seeing a man who had been shot in the head but not killed,“play dead” in order to not be shot again.

Although two of his siblings were murdered, his stories were about “survival and triumph,” Mina stated. Certainly, her father could have cast these stories differently, as tales of desperation, hunger, cold, and misery all of which he surely experienced. Instead, he transmitted a sense of excitement and courage and described empowerment and personal victory over the enemy. He turned frightening stories into exciting adventures. He may have been deliberately protecting his children with this fantastical rendition but regardless, his stories reflect his optimism and strength.

Rachel’s mother turned macabre Holocaust experiences into humor, acting them out. Rachel recounted how, when she and her sister were 8 or 9 years old, sitting around the table,

she’d tell us stories. She made it funny—how she had to drink soup from a shoe and the shoe had a hole in it [Rachel imitates how her mother acted it out, miming holding up the shoe and drinking from it]. When you really think about it, that’s a shoe and it’s a cold climate.

Indeed, drinking watery soup through a shoe is a very disturbing image of poverty and depravity, yet she turned it into humor.

Rachel’s mother told another story about an Appell—the camp roll call. During one Appell, there were “hundreds of naked women in cold weather in the middle of the night.” Rachel’s mother must have mimicked women running around naked, with their arms crossed across their chests either out of modesty or trying to stay warm, and her daughters laughed at her imitations. Although it was entertaining when she was young, now as an adult, Rachel realizes how ghastly these stories are. She also realizes that her mother dealt with her trauma through humor. While her memories are traumatic, Rachel’s mother’s dealt with them through comedy. Rachel’s postmemory is likely mixed, with early memories of humor now tinged with more traumatic images. Her story illustrates how much a parent’s delivery of her past affects the way in which this history is transmitted to the next generation and then received and processed over time.

We would not be likely to hear about trauma from Alan, a middle-aged businessman and COS. Alan’s father and his family were saved by non-Jewish Poles who brought his family food in the forest and warned them when there was danger. Alan’s grandfather had worked with peasants in his lumber business and some of them risked their and their families’ lives to help them. His father’s “take-away” was focused on how ordinary people went to extraordinary ends to save his family in light of the laws about what happened to Poles who helped Jews. Hearing his grandparents’ stories growing up “felt like being in the middle of a movie about heroism …” As a result of his experiences, Alan’s father became a rabbi and always helped people. Alan’s postmemory then includes his family’s stories of help from and gratitude to non-Jewish farmers and his father’s lifelong reaction and life lesson that one must always help others.

Stories of heroism, triumph, happenstance or luck were threaded through the tales these and other survivor-parents told and performed for their children. This is not to say that these survivors were not traumatized by the Holocaust or that their children did not take in the horror of what occurred, but only that it did not necessarily overshadow the inspiring aspects of these memories. Although parents’ experiences included the tumult and terror of forced displacement and loss of friends, schooling, and family, some transmitted within their stories messages of resilience, strength, and fortitude and in some cases, gratitude and compassion. In other words, these COS have a postmemory of their parents’ Holocaust experiences told as stories of strength, heroism, humor, the excitement of adventure and sometimes even joy, in Mina’s case. From the kind of parent–child interactions we observe in several of the narratives, it is not difficult to imagine that some of these COS carry with them other family memories of joy, love, happiness, and warmth as well.

Parents who did not talk about the Holocaust

We now turn to those parents who did not speak about the Shoah, another common pattern seen in the literature. There are variations among this group as well, like the previous one. And just as ways of speaking about the Holocaust can be quite different, not all silences are the same. Some parents chose not to talk about their Holocaust histories and others simply could not speak about the past; it was not an option. Those in the former group were more agentic and made a deliberate decision for silence or near-silence so as to not burden their children. ¹¹ They were protective and wanted their children to have as normal a childhood as possible.

A different kind of silence occurs when survivors are unable to speak about their past and it is not a choice. In these cases, survivors simply cannot access and open their well-locked “inner crypt” (Abraham and Torok cited in Schwab, 2010: 49) and talk about their past. These survivors usually did not explain this to their children beyond “I can’t talk about it” or giving no response at all. Of course, they too wanted the best for their children, without a doubt. These two different types of silences may not look different but it is possible that they feel different to a child and have different effects since the histories of those who cannot talk about it are simply inaccessible to the survivor, like a protective steel wall. This analytical distinction is important in terms of what occurs later, as children grow up.

Ted’s parents did not talk about the past but also did not shield or protect him from it. His parents were in the Belski resistance group in a Polish forest and Ted was proud of his father’s history as a resistance fighter. When he was growing up, his parents had reunions with 6–8 couples from the group several times a year

and they’d sit around, eating herring and drink their booze and smoke their cigarettes. The more booze, the more songs came out and the more songs that came out, more tears. There were lots of stories, most of them very disturbing. And I soaked it up … my parents went through unspeakable horrors.

His father’s job in the ghetto before his parents escaped was to haul dead bodies. One of the bodies he had to haul was a cousin’s infant who the Nazis had smashed against the wall. “How do you process that?” Ted asked. Still, his parents did not try and shelter him in any way.

Ted’s father did not talk much in general. “My dad was not a man of many words. He didn’t give us advice, he lived by example.” He was hard on his sons. His mother also did not share her Holocaust past with her children. But interestingly, they did not keep their sons from being present at these reunions where they seem to have heard too much for their ages. His narrative suggests that these stories affected him deeply.

There was little communication in his family about the Holocaust or much else and it does not appear to have been a warm family. His parents separated when he was 18 years and he recounts that his parents’ marriage was not based on love. His postmemory is likely to include some trauma based on the stories he overheard and his parents’ non-communicative styles. Interestingly, his children have close relationships with his parents. Despite the difficulties he described, he is very sympathetic toward them: “they were flawed human beings. But I understand more now.” In their study of Israeli COS, Wiseman and Barber (2008) found that many in their sample also changed their views of their parents after having children and were able to forgive them for some of their behaviors. This belated forgiveness and understanding can certainly modify some of the more traumatic aspects of postmemory.

Marsha’s father is one of the survivor-parents who also chose silence. He claimed that he could not remember his life before the war. However, she and her sister were able to figure out what happened from their parents’ conversations in Yiddish. Her parents cried whenever speaking about the Holocaust. Parental silence combined with survivors speaking about the Shoah only in Yiddish seems to have been a pattern among many families. Observing parents’ emotional distress such as crying can be very disturbing to children. Yet Marsha also stated that “they focused more on being proud to be Jewish rather than the Holocaust.” This suggests that although Marsha and her siblings could see and feel some of their parents’ pain, their parents actively encouraged them to feel positive about the identity and tradition they inherited. Still, this suggests a painful postmemory that includes the upset of seeing parents cry.

Later in life, Marsha’s father had gall bladder surgery, which must have deeply affected him, in terms of his sense of mortality. After that, “he couldn’t stop talking! He was like a fire hydrant!” From the father who had claimed he could not recall his pre-war life, as an adult, Marsha found out that before the war, he had been married, had had a child, and saw his child being killed. Marsha’s father had a traumatic history but only shared it with his second set of children when they were adults after he experienced a health scare. He chose not to share these horrific stories with them when they were young by “forgetting,” but later in life, he told them everything. Thus, Marsha’s postmemory expanded later in life and now includes a very traumatic story.

Dave’s father Leon was hidden in a monastery during the war. One of the monks, a jovial man, would go into town regularly and drink with the Germans in order to get information about upcoming raids. That way, he could move Leon elsewhere temporarily, to keep him safe. Dave’s father deliberately did not tell his children much about his history when they were growing up and it is not clear whether they asked him much. “I had very limited knowledge of what he had gone through.” According to Dave, his father “knew that we needed to be allowed to be kids and not having this hanging over us. That’s an amazing gift that he gave me.” When reading Helen Epstein’s (1979) book, Dave could not relate to the complaints and problems expressed by COS and restated, “it is a gift they gave me.”

It does not appear that Dave felt anything was wrong when he was young which is a little unusual in this cohort. Similar to Marsha’s experience, the silence was time-limited in Dave’s family and shifted due to life-cycle change. Dave’s father eventually told his entire story to his children who accompanied him on a trip back to his childhood home. Dave could be categorized in the first group of families where parents talked in age-appropriate ways; however, besides the very basic outline of the story, Dave’s father Leon was silent about his past when his children were growing up.

Dave describes growing up in a “very happy house” in which his father “refused to be defined by his Holocaust experiences.” Dave claimed that his father was a very funny person who could find humor in anything. What Leon taught his children is that “you celebrate the person, not what eventually happened to them out of their realm of control.” This kind of attitude is rare in the literature although we see a similar viewpoint in Heidi’s mother in the last section. Dave’s descriptions of his upbringing and home sound very positive. He was the most forthright COS about how grateful he is to his father for his attitude toward the Shoah and how little it affected his upbringing.

Joseph’s parents did not talk about the Holocaust with him but his father “talked about nothing BUT the Holocaust to my children.” They felt their survival was a “badge of honor” but did not speak to their children about it in order to protect them and to focus all their attention on becoming American. Many researchers, myself included, have found that survivors are more open about their past with their grandchildren, whether it is due to a sense of mortality, not being as busy with working and raising a family, seeing “Schindler’s List,” or other reasons. It is striking that while some parents wanted to protect their children from the horrors of their pasts, they were less worried about its effects on their grandchildren.

Joseph’s parents were Greek Jews and very proud of their Sephardic background. They sent Joseph to friends in Salonika every summer since he was twelve. He describes a family in which there was great joy and celebration of their heritage. Joseph’s father used to say that “life is about sharing the good from generation to generation” which may explain why there were 350 people at his bar mitzvah!

Besides parents who wanted to protect their children from the Holocaust by not talking about it, some COS wanted to protect their parents by not asking about it, what has been termed “mutual overprotection” (Wiseman et al., 2006). And then, there are COS we rarely hear about—those who do not ask their parents questions because they are not interested. Estelle admits that at an age when she could have asked her father, she was self-absorbed. Indeed, it is rare to read about a child of survivors who is not interested in his parent’s past because of all US studies of COS are based on self-selected samples. Many COS in this study refer to siblings who are uninterested in their family history and uninvolved. But since we only hear from those who are interested enough to volunteer for a study, we know little about the tens of thousands of the COS who do not. To conclude this section, a few parents in the entire sample did not tell their stories to their children but almost everyone eventually told their entire story, either to their children, their grandchildren or to Spielberg’s Shoah Visual History project.