Daisy Leon

Professor Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-016
11/10/2015
Trauma in Holocaust Survivors: A Research Review
When I first began taking psychology in high school the psychological disorders always
interested me. Your brain isnt invincible it most definitely can be harmed and can cause serious
damage to the way you think or act. It would be ignorant to say that the Holocaust survivors
picked right back off where they left off before the Holocaust, with no effects from the horrors
they had gone through. That is why when I found out we were inquiring about the Holocaust I
wanted to look at the psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors. In this paper I will
discuss two articles; the first one is The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview
by Paul Chodoff and the second Working with Victims of Persecution: Lessons from Holocaust
Survivors by Joanne Levine. Both of the articles describe the effects of Holocaust on the
survivors.
The first article I chose to discuss is The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An
Overview. Holocaust researcher Paul Chodoff writes first about a personal account of an
Auschwitz survivor, Mrs. S and then discusses her and other survivors long-term psychiatric and
psychological effects. Mr. Paul Chodoff has interviewed many Holocaust Survivors and he has
found similar effects between survivors. Isolation of affect was so common between
concentration camp inmates that when they described the horrors they went through it was as if
nothing major had happened. Paul Chodoff writes, Mrs. S also illustrates isolation of affect in
its extreme form of emotional anesthesia when she says, it didnt bother me, I had no feeling

whatsoever when she was being shaved while naked in front of SS troops (153). Not only was
she shaved completely by someone else, but also the SS troops stared at her and other women
when being shaved with sinful eyes and it didnt bother her at all. I could never imagine going
through that and having men stare at me, part of their purity and dignity was taken from the each
time they had to undress in front of these men. It just baffles me, how long did it take Mrs. S to
get to the point where she just didnt care anymore? This quote is relevant to my inquiry work
because it shows an effect of the trauma Holocaust survivors faced. Not only were the prisoners
of the Holocaust broken down physically, but also they were so mentally and emotionally
leaving them crushed in all forms.
Mr. Chodoff even made up his own label for the condition the Holocaust survivors faced,
which he named, the Concentration camp syndrome (153). He explains, Its distinguishing
features included a severe anxiety state marked particularly by apprehensiveness and hyper
vigilance, along with various sleep disturbances, particularly night terrors and nightmares (153).
Mr. Chodoff has interviewed over 200 Holocaust survivors and he has seen some form of similar
trauma between them so this makes it relevant to my inquiry work. The victims of the Holocaust
faced a living nightmare day and night for years, that was their reality for years and then when
the war ended to actually be free was something unimaginable. I would also have night terrors
and nightmares and would always wonder if its too good to be true that Im not in a camp or in
hiding anymore. I believe what he says because to me it is easy to see that the survivors would
suffer from what he described.
When the Holocaust ended in 1945 the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) still wasnt
recognized as a disorder, it wasnt until 1980. Mr. Chodoff agreed that the most adequate
disorder to diagnose the majority of the Holocaust survivors was PTSD from the DSM IV

(1994), Although the concentration camp syndrome, as I have pictured it, has some significant
differences from this description, particularly the characteristic presence of depression and
survivor guilt, at least its anxiety fore seems to fulfill the criteria for the PTSD, and there is
certainly no question about the presence of trauma as the main etiological factor (154). Before I
even started researching about the effects of the Holocaust it was very clear to me that they
would have showed signs of PTSD. The survivors whether in concentration camps, or in hiding
went through a traumatic 12 years of their life, thats more than a decade of constant pain,
hunger, and abuse. I couldnt imagine spending 12 years of my life like that and thats why it
wouldnt be hard to believe they faced long-term psychological problems.
What made it more believable that Holocaust survivors suffered from PTSD is war veterans
suffering from PTSD because of the similarities they faced, like not knowing if they would live
to see another day or hearing or seeing people get killed, some that they even know. Im not
saying that war veterans are exactly alike to Holocaust survivors because survivors were victims
not by choice but they show correlation between events and symptoms. Mr. Chodoffs article
was beneficial to my inquiry work because he was able to back up what he wrote about, he did
research and interviews with survivors and he included a testimony to help readers understand
more in depth as to why the survivors suffered psychological consequences because of the
Holocaust.
My second article was Working with Victims of Persecution: Lessons from Holocaust
Survivors, this article was a bit different because Ms. Joanne Levine did research on Holocaust
survivors to help social workers have a guide on how to help victims of similar events transition
to America in a more positive way without suffering in silence. Ms. Levine also talks about the
major effects of the Holocaust on survivors, Major universal reactions to the long-term effects

of massive psychic trauma observed in Holocaust survivors include chronic and severe
depression; disturbances in memory and cognition; feeling of guilt (about their survival while
others died) marked by anxiety, fear, hallucinations, and sleep disturbances; syndromes of pain,
muscle tension, psychosomatic diseases, and occasional personality changes (353). This quote
backs up the first article I wrote about; they both are describing similarities in the effects of the
Holocaust on survivors so this also shows that these symptoms werent made up. This also
defends my inquiry topic that psychological effects were present in Holocaust survivors and that
there were many effects. During the end of the Holocaust many Germans and people from other
nations wanted to look away from the Holocaust and act like nothing happened but you cant
look away from something like this especially when it has caused so many problems for the
victims of this hell.
Aging has been seen as very problematic between Holocaust survivors Ms. Levine writes,
Second, the life cycle of aging may be experienced as highly traumatic by survivors. Old age
may elicit a recapitulation of Holocaust experiences, most prominently separation from children
and the deaths of family and friends (354). This information shows that the effects of the
Holocaust are long-term and it also makes it easy to understand why Holocaust survivors would
have a problem with aging. During the Holocaust the victims who were old or had disabilities
were immediately killed off, they were of no use to the Nazis so it was better to just end it right
there. The victims who survived and saw this realized why they were being killed off and it may
trigger memories of the Holocaust and in their head they believe that they need to be independent
if not they will have the same fate as the people in the camps. This is relevant to my inquiry work
because it shows that no matter what age the victims survived the Holocaust when they aged the
Holocaust still had a traumatic effect on them.

My research has helped me learn so much more about the trauma Holocaust survivors faced
but not only that it helped me learn so much more about the Holocaust. The quotes I used in my
research review were important to me because they stuck with me when I was reading the article,
especially the first quote I used with Mrs. S, it was hard to read because I am a female and I
couldnt imagine what difficult times female survivors faced. It was easy to dialogue with my
sources because Ive always had so much to say about them even from the beginning when I was
only reading the articles. My research has helped me understand more about the Holocaust like
that some survivors suffered even at old age because of memories of the Holocaust. I hope that
when people inquire about the Holocaust they also see that this should never repeat itself in
history.

Works Cited
Chodoff, Paul. The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview. Political
Psychology 18.1 (1997): 147157. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Levine, Joanne. Working with Victims of Persecution: Lessons from Holocaust Survivors.
Social Work 46.4 (2001): 350360. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Peer response
What you wrote so far has met the requirements of having one source, one quote and
dialoguing with the source. You gave a very strong example when you said given how the Nazis
ended up trying to burn every single document they had and cover their tracks to the crimes they
committed in both the war and the Holocaust it is important, at least in my opinion, to see the
deeds and actions they have done so that people can learn to never again follow in their dark
footsteps, it backs up your comment and it also shows the efficiency of the partisans like you

stated in the next sentence. You are missing another source and a quotation and a reminder on
how the source relates to your topic, as well as a conclusion and works cited page. You did a very
good job in utilizing the Quotation Sandwich approach because you introduced the key point at
the beginning and your comments were after the quote. Overall I enjoyed reading what you had
written down and I know its going to be a great research review!