The second holocaust: Therapeutic rescue when life threatens

Abstract

Abstract This paper, in its first part, describes a phenomenon termed the second Holocaust, observed in Holocaust survivors and their children, whereby the original destruction of the Holocaust is not only reexperienced in postwar losses, but reenacted without conscious awareness. The Holocaust colors postwar adjustment, leaving survivors and their children resigned to attenuated and devitalized lives in the shadow of catastrophic Holocaust loss. In its second part, this paper deals with therapeutic interventions that can interrupt this phenomenon by initiating psychological equivalents of rescue in a patient's current life that were unforthcoming during war persecution. Such therapeutic rescue after the event helps restore the parental function of engaging and animating life.