The Experience of Meaning in Suffering among Holocaust Survivors

Abstract

Can life be experienced as meaningful in the face of tragic suffering? Research with a select group of Holocaust survivors explored this question. Using a heuristic approach, the phenomenon of meaning in suffering first was explored in a personal context. Entry into the “life worlds” of Holocaust survivors was then sought, through a 2-year attendance of the meetings of a survivor organization in Johannesburg, as a participant observer. Holocaust literature was studied and visits to the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem made with the view of gaining an understanding of the suffering of concentration camp victims. Five survivors were finally interviewed and their narratives analyzed and compared with the recorded narrative of the famous Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl. The results highlighted that meaning can be experienced in suffering if suffering is accepted as a challenge to overcome evil with good in the practice of those values that make life worthwhile.

Happiness in the Face of Adversity: Reformulating the Dynamic and Modular Bases of Subjective Well-Being

“…Studies of posttraumatic growth show that people coping with traumas often display positive outcomes through new meanings attached to the self, social relationships, and philosophy of life (Tedeschi, Park, & Calhoun, 1998). Other meaning-making strategies for restructuring experiences of anguish have also been documented (Davis, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Larson, 1998;Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000;Shantall, 1999;Smyth & Pennebaker, 1999).…”

Why Gerontologists Should Care About Empirical Research on Religion and Health: Transdisciplinary Perspectives

“…Another important function of religion is providing meaning for issues that strike at the very core of human well-being (Mattis, 2002;Shantall, 1999). Even science cannot explain why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.…”

Memories of Holocaust-related traumatic experiences, sense of coherence, and survivors' subjective well-being in late life: some puzzling findings

“…Thus, children and adolescents who underwent horrific events but had a higher SOC may have been more successful in finding some purpose in their horrific experiences and consequently responded more favorably to the trauma they experienced compared to their low SOC counterparts (Shantall, 1999). It has not escaped us that while we have presented the potential effects of the traumatic Holocaust experiences in terms of a single direction -that the Holocaust experiences produced the outcomes of interest, alternately, it might also be the case that those people who were able to survive this brutal experience were those who had a higher propensity for SOC and SWB in the first place.…”