IN ENGLISH
◊ På engelska
Children in the Holocaust — Now and then.
Affects and memory images after extreme traumatisation
By Suzanne Kaplan
Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. 2003.
409 pp.
Reviewed by Bernadette
Buhl-Nielsen, Bredgade 69 A, 3, DK-1260 Copenhagen K, Denmark
—
bb-n@dadlnet.dk
As the title suggests, this is a disturbing book. The subject
matter consists of the devastating effects of extreme trauma on affect and
memory not as experienced by an adult mind but as it impacts the developing and
vulnerable mind of a child. The book is mainly concerned with the Holocaust but,
as if to prevent time from serving as a comforter, the author also refers to
research from the recent genocide in Rwanda.
The book is based on a doctoral thesis from the University of
Stockholm (Kaplan, 2002a), parts of which have been published in English in
article form (Kaplan, 2000, 2002b). Kaplan (2000) was awarded the 2001 Hayman
Prize.
The structure of the book follows the author’s process in
compiling it and is divided into three main parts preceded by a detailed
Introduction. In the Introduction, we are presented with the background for the
study.
Kaplan’s research project emanates from her work as co-ordinator
of the Swedish part of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation’ documentation project. In 1995–8 Kaplan co-ordinated a total of 300
interviews, 40 of which were interviews with child survivors born between 1929
and 1939. This group became the basis of Kaplan’s research project. The
interview process is described and a full interview is included as an example.
The author proposes that a major effect of massive trauma on a
child is the disruption of a particularly sensitive period of the life cycle—reproduction.
Child survivors have been forced to become adults precociously and as such have
not had the opportunity to be children themselves, with access to parental care,
which could be internalised and passed on to the next generation. Another major
area of interest in the book is the way in which what happened to these children
in the past is related to how they recount their life stories in the present.
Kaplan elegantly interweaves four areas of knowledge in an attempt to understand
both the inner and the outer worlds of the survivors and the ways in which the
past affects the present: historical background, narrative theory, cognitive
memory research and psychoanalysis.
The author introduces several new terms to illustrate key
concepts. The term ‘generational break’ is used as an overall concept that is
composed of both destructive and constructive components, which are dynamically
related to each other. Destructive aspects are termed ‘perforation’ and consist
of the inconceivable cruelty perpetrated by the Nazis and the internal
experiences to which these acts gave rise. The constructive aspects are covered
by the term ‘creating a space’ and include both external acts of caretaking, for
example being protected and hidden by others, and the internal, psychological
mechanisms used by the children to create a space in which to deal with their
experiences.
Another term, ‘age distortion’, is used to describe the
observation that the children’s age and conception of their own age was a
central factor in the way in which they handled their experiences. Age
distortion is a process that could contribute to either perforation or in
creating space. The ways in which child survivors relate their stories in the
present is seen as a function of the interplay of these components. The term
‘traumatic linkage’ is used to describe life stories in which affects from the
past either invade the present or are isolated from it and is related to the
effects of perforation. ‘Generational linkage’ refers to life stories
characterised by affect activation and symbolisation and is related to the
capacity for creating a space.
The first part of the book is based on a pilot study and
consists of the interviews of two women who, in spite of their differing
circumstances and backgrounds, presented similar difficulties; they seemed to
have problems with the idea of childbearing. When asked how her experiences had
affected her life, one of the women became highly agitated and answered, ‘That I
didn’t want to have children. That I had two abortions because I was a child
myself’ (p. 83).
This prompted the author to speculate that traumatic experiences
during the war could be a crucial factor in attitudes to childbearing and
reproduction and that this might be a more general problem in child survivors.
This did indeed seem to be the case in that, of the 40 child survivors, nine did
not have biological children. Of the remainder, more than half spontaneously
associated to childbearing themes when questioned about their childhood traumas.
The second part of the book is based on what the subjects say
about their experiences. Kaplan doesn’t just describe or recount the content of
the interviews, but, using grounded theory, also organises the content according
to the themes of her key processes: perforation, creating a space and age
distortion. Seven historical phases are described and used as a framework in
applying the principles of these central concepts. The seven phases or life
situations which the survivors experienced are anti-Semitism, deportation, life
in the ghetto, flight and hiding, concentration camps, liberation, transport to
and first meeting with Sweden.
We are led, page after page—130 in all—through a series of
horrific examples of the myriad ways in which these children experienced
physical and psychic invasion, made all the more poignant by the accompanying
description of their capacity for ‘creating a space’. For each of the historic
stages we are given details of the ways in which external events gave rise to
perforation or psychic invasion; images of being surrounded by dead bodies,
being branded with a number, having parents takenaway and killed.
In spite of the extreme and overwhelming external circumstances
specifically designed to exterminate them (only 11% of Jewish children in
Nazi-occupied territory survived the war), the life histories of these child
survivors also bear witness to processes of reparation and creativity. The
creation of space is illustrated by the ways in which the children, sometimes
helped by external circumstances, were able in some way to regulate their
experiences either in fantasy or by action. One example is of a child being
transported in a cattle truck who relates how she peered through the gaps to get
a glimpse of some mountains and was filled with a sense of excitement and
adventure. Another child was helped by a woman who stood the child on her feet
during roll call in the camp, so as to protect her from the cold. Other examples
include ways in which the children maintained internal links to memories of
parents or objects connected to parents.
Age distortion could be seen in the various ways in which
children adapted their age to the circumstances, many pretending to be older in
order to be assigned to hard labour instead of the gas chamber. Others had to
deal with adopting a precocious maturity in taking care of parents who had been
psychologically incapacitated. One survivor remembers envious feelings
engendered when looking at the adults in the camp; they had lived, she was going
to die and had only reached the age of 13.
Readers in whom the wish for a happy ending has been aroused by
the apparently promising themes of liberation and placement in Sweden are
disappointed. There is no happy ending. The harsh reality is of a world that in
many cases didn’t want to know and couldn’t understand. Even potentially happy
endings such as reunion with a parent were often fraught with internal conflict
and pain.
The third part of the book deals with how memories are recalled
and is introduced by an example of an event which is recalled independently in
similar ways by two subjects who had both participated in the event. A detailed
examination highlights similarities and differences in their accounts and leads
to questions about the construction and reconstruction of events. Kaplan’s
position on this is that both processes are present in the interviews, do not
exclude each other and can be difficult to distinguish. Citing Matthis (2000),
she explains that the affect being aroused during narrative is not necessarily
connected to the events being related consciously, but that it hasn’t just
appeared from nowhere, it is related to something which has been experienced.
The ways in which affects are regulated during recall and
related to narrative is divided into the categories mentioned earlier, according
to whether traumatic linkage of affect or generational linkage is dominant. This
is not always an ‘either/or’ question, as both forms of linkage can be present
at different times in the same interview. Kaplan sees these two forms of linkage
as a dynamic balance, which can also be influenced by ongoing events. This is
illustrated in the book by reference to the ways in which the interview process,
which took place over several sessions, influenced the survivors, as did
attributes of the people taking the interview.
The author agrees with the position that massive trauma
influences survivors in similar ways, irrespective of previous personality
structure. However, she takes a developmental stance in claiming that the
child’s developmental level and capacity to express painful events are important
factors in the way in which they recount their life histories later. The ability
to create a space for thinking is seen as linked to the quality of object
representations but also to external events and opportunities.
In conclusion, this is in many ways a fascinating book. The raw
data is in itself unusual; as Kaplan points out, many studies have been carried
out with respect to adult survivors but comparatively little research has
documented the effects of massive trauma on child survivors. Several child
survivors were themselves under the impression that their life histories were
relatively uninteresting because of the fact that they were only children at the
time. The way in which the author treats the wealth of data generated by the
interviews is impressive. Her organisation of the data into relevant core
processes allows for a psychoanalytically insightful appreciation of minute, but
nonetheless important detail.
This also contributes to making the book difficult to read, as
it demands considerable absorption. The strong emphasis on data collected from
the interviews in the building of theory interferes somewhat with associations
to established theory on the subject. Winnicott’s idea of potential space for
example has obvious associations to Kaplan’s formulation of ‘creating a space’.
However, a chapter towards the end of the book does help in pulling some of the
threads together.
This study set out to investigate the effects of massive trauma
on child survivors based on an analysis of their life stories; as such, it is
not intended to be a comparative study. A tantalising but largely unanswered
question, therefore, is whether processes and outcomes are significantly
different from adult survivors.
One could speculate that some of the mechanisms described are
indeed peculiar to children. It seems less likely, for example, that an adult
would be filled with a sense of adventure and excitement while peering out of a
cattle truck on the way to a concentration camp. While this particular example
may enhance the possibility for the creation of space in the case of a child as
opposed to an adult, many other examples could be cited where the child is at a
disadvantage. This would be an interesting area for further research.
Kaplan ends her book by entertaining a certain sceptical
attitude to the concept of resilience. Her chief objection is that a focus on
resilience and survival strategies may overlook the fact that all children are
deeply affected by massive trauma, regardless of how well they may have been
able to compensate for it. Her hope is that she may have contributed to a deeper
understanding of the processes involved.
In this, she has certainly succeeded.
References
Kaplan S (2000). Child survivors and childbearing:
Memories from the Holocaust invading the present. Scand Psychoanal Rev
23:249–82.
Kaplan S (2002a). Child survivors in the Holocaust—Affects
and memory images in trauma and generational linking. Dissertation.
University of Stockholm.
Kaplan S (2002b). Two boys—One event. How memories are
recalled in interviews about massive trauma. Scand Psychoanal Rev 25:108–16.
Matthis I (2000). Sketch for a metapsychology of affect.
Int J Psychoanal 81:215–27.
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1 June 2004,
vol. 85, iss. 3, pp. 767-799(33)
Swedish
German
Senast uppdaterad
2018-12-18