Children of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: A critical review of the literature.

Abstract

This review of published research on children of Holocaust survivors focuses on new directions taken in clinical and experimental studies during the past decade. Methodological problems persisting from earlier research are considered, and suggestions for future research strategies are offered.

Vulnerability to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adult Offspring of Holocaust Survivors

“…When differences between offspring recruited only from the community and comparison subjects were evaluated, findings in this offspring subgroup consistently replicated the findings for the entire offspring group, subject to a reduction in power due to the smaller sample size. Thus, the results cannot be attributed to any bias introduced by inclusion of a clinical sample, as has been frequently hypothesized (20).…”

“…The events were then further classified as low-magnitude events (e.g., mugging without a weapon, motor vehicle accident without injury, sexual touching) and high-magnitude events (e.g., mugging with a weapon, motor vehicle accident with injury, rape). The Antonovsky Life Crises Scale (20) was used to inquire about cumulative stressful life events. This scale lists both life-threatening events (e.g., having a life-threatening illness, having wartime experiences) and non-lifethreatening events (e.g., family in extreme financial debt, denial of a promotion at work, feeling overwhelmed by too many responsibilities).…”

Transmission of Response to Trauma? Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors’ Reaction to Cancer

“…Parents of the second-generation Holocaust survivors were, by definition, immigrants from Europe, as were nearly 90% of the parents of the comparison group patients. Solkoff (12) maintains that the "immigrant status is as important as the Holocaust experience in determining differences in psychological adjustment among offspring." That potential source of error was avoided in this study, and the differences observed between the groups cannot therefore be attributed to differences in the immigrant status of their parents.…”

Breast cancer and psychological distress: mothers’ and daughters’ traumatic experiences

“…Empirical research on transgenerational transmission of trauma has reported contradictory evidence regarding the parenting behavior of Holocaust survivors [3,43], with significant impact upon the identity of their children to the Holocaust experience [15,23,33].…”