Bereaved Children in the Shoah
© 2000,2; Elizabeth Kirkley Best PhD
Bereavement with children is always a severe journey. Children adapt to
grief so much differently than adults in normal situations and in a so
much more complicated way. Stages and Theories of grief fall apart in
personal experience: Nothing is so neatly defined in the human tragedy.
With children in the Shoah, though the process and experience becomes a tragically unique grief, that only few can understand. Though most survivors who can now remember are aged, they were children then and the marks kleft by that most diffcult grief is hard to be met by those of just who have experienced grief only in the comfort of normal experience and a 'safe' society.
today, one has to only turn on the television to hear about the many many forms of grief. When Kubler-Ross's popular book on stages of grief hit the market decades ago, the comfort afforded the bereaved changed to an analysis and treatment procedure.Since that time there have been a myriad of 'treatment' and 'stage' theories: but authentic responses to grief are rare. For the Child in the Holocaust, to understand the experience, one needs to understand loss, and that at a young age, coupled by unique and horrific happenings that only few children ever walk through. While we will discuss descriptions and processes in grief in general and as they relate to children in general and Children of the Shoah, it is important to keep in mind not the processes so much, as the lived experience. These bereaved children, after a bitter and twisted Childhood, and a lifetime of loss, are now among our elderly.
Mourning & the Shoah
- A. Are Stage Theories Real?
The most popular way of looking at Grief and Bereavement today, both in professional journals and the media, is by applying "Stages" or state theories to the experience of grief. But stage theories are very problematic. First, no one experiencing a devastating loss goes neatly through first one emotion and then after awhile, another. Secondly, depending on the personality, one may experience all or none of the phenomena. Thirdly, and most troublesome, is that persons may be "forced' through stages that aren't really there. Lastly, the notion of stages by psychological definitions are that they must be distinct, sequential and the state of a person must be different at the end of the stages than at the beginning. Kubler-Ross, widely known for her 5 state theory of death and dying, even admitted that these criteria did not hold. This most widely used approach has actually done a great deal of damage to already bewildered and suffering persons who either are held accountable or hold themselves accountable for not progressive normally through stages that do not really exist. Anger, Shock, Depression and so forth are certainly experienced by grieving persons, but do not fit into neat, organized stages.5,6
- B. Adult vs Childhood Bereavement (General)
Before understanding bereavement and loss in Children of the Holocaust, one must first understand the differences between Childhood and Adult Bereavement. Adults have a far greater ability to cope with loss, especially if it is a timely loss. Most adults are sufficiently mature cognitively and emotionally to deal with the intense pain, even if unbearable. This is not true for a child. While only a remnant of bereaved adults will develop a significant mental aberration from the loss. most Childhood bereavement, even if normal will seem as if it is not. Children do not have the cognitive and emotional resources to make sense of a loss: if it is central, such as the death of a sibling, Mother or Father, the painfulness presents an impossible psychological task for the child. Very young children do not have the ability to believe in an object that is not in sight. This cognitive task, "object permanance"8plays heavily in childhood bereavement. A toddler, while having developed the ability to perceive an object exists when it is not present, may have a much harder time making sense of a parent's absence.The notion that children have a different pattern of coping than adults is seen clearly in the assessment of children for 'mental illness' or disorder. Psychologists and Psychiatrists use a whole different system to assess problems in children:8 for example, a childhood fantasy of an imaginary friend or beliefs in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and so forth, is not seen as unusual; in an adult it would be pathological. As it relates to children experiencing great loss and trauma, we must never be too quick to judge the 'normality' of adaptation: children with less mature coping skills may adapt initially to great losses in what may seem disturbing ways, but understood from the child's point of view, makes perfect sense, and in essence keep a child from experiencing floods of agonizing emotion which even adults cannot bear. This is a good thing, in that the child would be overwhelmed to the point of psychosis if forced to confront that giant, but it is negative in the sense that a child experiencing a severe loss will 'mutate' the grief into patterns and coping which years later may prove harmful in the child's life, and by that time be untraceable to the original event. An example of this is the common pattern of juvenile delinquency following a loss of a parent: even a very well-behaved child may begin acting-out, doing unspeakable things, stealing and the similar actions.
- Differing Bereavements of Children in the Shoah: Adapting to
Differing Losses
Childhood bereavement in general, differ. While perhoaps the type of loss is not perfectly grief, nothetheless, different bereavements in Childhood may often be characterized by unusual or violent methods of coping. Almost every type of loss that is found in Childhood was represented in the Shoah in numbers that have been rarely seen.
The most obvious type of loss or course for children was that of a loss of parents: parents were often taken in violent deaths , both in Jewish familes and in all others as well due to war losses. Children during this period also suffered severe and horrifying separations, often ripped from parent's arms and placed
in camps or orphanages
without adult authority except over the institution. Those in charge of the children in the Camps or Orphanages, additionally
were often Anti-Semitic, or belonged to the Nazi Party, as position of authority were almost never given out without
party membership. 9 Children in captivity went from warm safe homes in centuries-established communities,
to bitter uncertainties, cruel and abusive circumstances, and in the worst scenarios, bizarre medical experimentation
and death.10 This bitterly paradoxical existence of being parentless, interred and mistreated, was often
confused by having some artifacts of normalcy: most are not aware there were swings at Auschwitz, or that Mengele
after conducting cruel experiments, particularly on twins, would speak softly to them, give them candy and lead them
by hand to extermination centers.11 It was a sickening-sweet abuse: children interred in the Camps before
they were killed were pushed to emotional oblivion and left in undying confusion. Those who were not killed in the
camps, as most were,
after the war were deeply scarred by not only the war, but by cruelty, loss of family, confusion
and severe separation and identity issues. Childhood Loss & Adult Survivors
Separation issues for these children lasted a lifetime: even as older adults, child-survivors of the holocaust have severe issues with trust, separation and giving spouses and children independence. They are constantly sure of impending loss and a sense of 'doom'. 12 Many suffered a lifetime of despair: the inability to trust coupled by untenable memories have affected their adult faith in God, and ability to trust His goodness, presence or mercy. Many adult child-survivors committed suicide in the post-war years: some even years later, and these deaths are seldom tallied the figures of those killed in the Shoah, and yet their deaths are directly related. Adult Children of those who were holocaust survivors suffer the fallout of their parents suffering: the children grew up often in the shadow of a deceased sibling; often having assimilated their parents fear and distrust, and yet developing in societies in peacetime; providing different issues of confusion. The most difficult thing that children of survivors face, is their need to develop into independent adults themselves, and their parents either difficulty or even terror at letting them go. It is often a dovetailing 'stress' or symbiosis; in which parents cannot let go, children cannot stay, children cannot let go. Emotional turmoil is a paramount manifestation of two generations affected deeply by the horror of war.Sibling Loss is also an issue as mentioned before: growing up in the shadow of a deceased child is not a small thing: in studies of siblings of stillborns, a 'vicarious child syndrome' is often observed: the first child becomes idealized and idolatrized, the second child unable to be perfect and living with an unreachable standard lives in constant comparison. There are many modern famous 'replacement' children: Vincent Van Gogh, Elvis Presley and others were either surviving twins or subsequent children. The Child of holocaust survivors often became that less-than-perfect second child, silently appeasing a parent's grief but never given absolute status as a new identity. The obtruse network of issues within survivors families are among the most difficult to discern, and counselors and psychologists/psychiatrists are almost never adequately trained in grief, or in this most specific bereavement, leaving survivors floundering. Most of our living survivors of the Shoah, were 20 or under during the war: the above dynamics affect most of them.
There were other concurrent losses, not all of which involved death. The loss of school, community, or as mundane a loss as a pet may seem trivial comapred to the war, but to the child it could be a breaking bereavement. The world has changed radically to the child, it offeres no security and only bewilderment: all certainty was robbed.
III. Normal Grief and it's Complications
What is normal and abnormal in grief is often a point of debate in professional communities. Grief is a long process. While popularized versions of grief treatment talk about 'stages'; the truth is grief very seldom progresses in a lock-step manner: there are often many things going on at once.11 Still, while grief ebbs and tides beyond the actual loss, there are certain characteristics and experiences which many go through. Bowlby describes the early days and weeks of bereavement as being characterized by shock and numbness, followed later by depression. Yearning and searching for the deceased, often with occasional mental deceptions of "finding' the lost person also occur, as the heart and mind begin to unlearn the virtual aspects of relationship. Resolutions and synthesis come later, for some much later. Grief is often accompanied by physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing, lack of appetite for sleep or food, insomnia, agitation and repetitive actions and an inability to focus or pay attention. Stress related illness occurs as much as six times as often in bereaved widows as in the non-bereaved of the same age and circumstances. There is also a greatly increased risk of suicide following a close loss, such as of a spouse, parent, or child. Children who lose a parent have a 5 time greater suicide rate than those who do not lose a parent. It is not uncommon to 'see' 'hear' or otherwise experience the presence of the deceased, although reports of this differ from culture to culture, mostly because of societal acceptability.12IV. Childhood Bereavement
Childhood Bereavement has its own patterns, and the most notable characteristic of children and loss is the instability of the pattern and unpredictability of the way grief will manifest itself. No two children grieve alike. Very young children, even infants can very early on detect loss: for the youngest infants, the response may be nothing more than discomfort but quickly over months, the infant in primitive fashion forms a bond or attachment with its parent. Loss of a parent around 7-12 months in infancy will go unarticulated for a lifetime, but is at a radically sensitive time for bonding, when children experience stranger anxiety, concepts of object-permanance, and so forth: in other words, they can detect loss and love, but without language and formal concept, they can only experience the distress, often severe that the loss of a parent may bring, which is often coupled with being put in trying circumstances. Since many infants were removed from Jewish homes in the Shoah from infancy to age 6 , the effects of loss were paramount: the youngest children who survived may not even remember their parents, but would carry with them lifelong and almost un-rootable issues of distrust and anxiety. Since few mental health professionals are able to trace vague anxieties back to infantile reactions, adult-survivor anxieties will frequently go on unattended or treated as other problems or etiologies.As children grow into toddler years, they have more developed concepts of a person who is loved either 'being-there' or 'not-being-there'. Children of 18 months to 3 years are in a period of emotional bonding and dependency which has matured from infantile-physical understandings of attachment and loss, to a more fully developed emotional love and attachment for their caretaker, still usually the mother at this stage. They have a profound sense of a parent's presence or lack of it: loss brings severe distress. They are however, being finally mobile able to 'experiment' with physical distance from the parent.9 As applied to the Child during the Shoah, this means that loss issues can be deeply imbedded even when both child and parent survived and were later reunited. Temporary loss, (the effects increase with timing of the loss and length of the separation) can make their way deeply into the life of a survivor: since in the Shoah, these separations were often to orphanages or other institutions, the loss was often accompanied by rage, and institutional effects. Years later, undefined rage and the 'wooden-affect' of long-term institutionalization may manifest themselves.
V. Bereavement of Parents
Loss in the Parent Child relationship is often substantial and damaging, but in adulthood the loss of a parent, while tragic is easier to handle than the loss of a child by a parent. The reasons for this are apparent: we expect during a lifetime that our parents will die before us:they are older. We never expect a child to die. This is severely compounded by the nature of the relationship. The care for a child also bears certain characteristics which we know predisposes a person for a difficult or 'morbid' grief.2 Care for a vulnerable person, predisposes a person to more complicated grief: any caretaker taking care even of an older person through a long illness upon the death of the person, make experience a long and difficult grief even though relief may be experienced as well. In addition to vulnerability of the deceased, 'babyness', innocence, or 'tenderness' of age increases the likelihood of attachment and love, as well as the intensity of loss when it is suffered.Patterns of Bereavement and Adaptation in Survivors
Patterns and Adaptation in survivors almost always takes on a familial characteristic unless there were no surviving relatives. The Most common pattern is mild to severe anxieties over separation and loss as can be easily intuited. Even years after as the Children of Shoah have become our elderly, certain behaviors still relating to the severity of incarceration and horror as a child may have a role in daily behavior. An example of this is found in the excellent metaphors of MAUS I & II in which the father, a survivor hoards food substances or has food-related eccentricities. Living months and years without nourishment as a child in extreme circumstances becomes indelible on the personality. There is always an 'impending threat' of not having enough, or being at the edge of doom. Separation issues actually have similar patterns: there is alway an 'on-the-edge' feeling, as though the waves of loss could come again at any moment. This leads to a symbiosis already described in which the child, needing independence suffocates under the too-watchful eye of a parent. Some parents, with or without so severe an experience as the Shoah tend to overprotect or see the child as a "vulnerable child". (This happens often when the death of a sibling has occurred simultaneously or before). Children may react in two ways: either becoming overly dependent, or reacting in distancing themselves at every opportunity which causes even further anxiety on both parts.Perhaps one of the least dealt with issues is that of suicide of survivors many years later. While some mention is made in the literature (e.g. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in the early 80's) when a suicide occurs, the fact that the person was a holocaust survivor is seen as incidental and not causal. It is often a far-removed cause. Trust factors loom large throughout a lifetime: there is always the fear of reprisal and hurt, and rest is an uneasy comodity. When all of the new possibilities of life fail and 'replacement' children leave home or fail to provide the emotional nourishment expected, the result is often severe despair: this is far beyond normal 'empty nest' feelings. Survivors have already spent a lifetime redefining meaning and living with terrifying realities and memories most of us never do. Severe disappointments and losses take on a grander hurt than for the person who has only peripherally suffered loss. Suicide and despair in these instances are not to be understood as in others: the depths of the world here have been experienced: hope is cheap talk. It is difficult for helping professional to understand given their training that for some, creating new meaning given what they have already experienced has a real flavor of not being worth the risk. The number of suicides in the 60 years past the Shoah of survivors has never been added to the death count, but is most real, and directly related to the Shoah. Family comfort, and not psychoanalysis or other modes of therapy provide the greatest defense. Control issues also enter in. tbc
"Still fascinated to presume that some are like my own..."1
I. Traditional Concepts and Descriptions of Grief
The same psychological and psychiatric models which apply to most
topics apply also to the study of Grief and Bereavement. The Medical
Model sees Grief as a disease, in need of treatment, cataloging and
diagnosis. The Behavioral Model sees grief as adaptation to the removal
of stimuli in the environment. The Psychoanalytic Model sees grief as a
process of "decathexis of an attachment object; and since the 1950s with
the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth, Grief and Loss has been seen as a
cognitive-ethological process with evolutionary
significance4. No matter how grief is described by the
clinical community, the lived experience of losing that which is most
important, is very
different that the 'hyper-scientific' explanations
filling professional journals and textbooks. Perhaps the one thing the
psychological community has given, has been detailed descriptions of
characteristics and processes of grief. Grief and loss, though do not
take place neatly: they are very specific to the individual, though
certain experiences may be common. Our division of grief into stages,
categories, and DSM-IV diagnoses is artificial and more often for the
sake of the clinician instead of the bereaved; these may in fact do much
harm to the bereaved. After so much research, poets and artists may
understand more of bereavement than practitioners. This especially true
regarding children, and hence children who lived through the nightmare
of the holocaust who are now the elderly. Life-long processes appear in
Loss issues with those victimized by Shoah; we would be remiss to
attribute coping as unusual even this many years later. In the following
sections, we will address grief in general and some of the issues
central to understanding loss, followed by applications to the grief of
Children who survived the holocaust and loss issues in the Camps,
Orphanages and aryanized Children.
II. Stages, Processes and Living Grief
There's grief of native country in sight of native air..."