The framing of atrocities: Documenting and exploring wide variation in aversion to Germans and German-related activities among Holocaust survivors.

Abstract

Interviews with 29 Holocaust survivors indicate wide variation in degree of aversion to Germans and activities associated with Germany. For some survivors, aversion is limited to those closest to the Nazi perpetrators; for others aversion includes anyone with German ancestry and any situation or product linked to contemporary Germany. This wide range of aversion following horrific experiences is not easily explained by known psychological mechanisms, and has important implications for understanding and ameliorating ethnopolitical conflict. Possible sources of variation in aversion are explored with measures of personality differences and differences in Holocaust experi-

Which Jews dislike contemporary Germans: Range and determinants of German aversion in Czech and U.S. Holocaust survivors and young American Jews.

“…A new variable presented in this paper was essentialism, which was not reported at all in our previous article on U.S. survivors (Cherfas et al, 2006). Unfortunately, it was not measured in the Czech sample.…”

“…Our interest is in another consequence of "ethnic" trauma, which is aversion to the perpetrators and descendants of the conflict, among survivors, and in the broader culture (here, in Jewish American college students who were born well after World War II). We have shown for American Jewish Holocaust survivors that some are averse to even being in the proximity of Germans who were not yet alive during World War II (Cherfas, Rozin, Cohen, Davidson, & McCauley, 2006). One psychologically important question is what maintains such an aversion, something of particular importance now in a world filled with long-running ethnic conflicts.…”

“…In our prior study (Cherfas et al, 2006), we initiated a search for accounts for variation in German aversion. In the present study, we supplement the results from the 29 American survivors, which we present again here in somewhat modified form, with results from 30 Czech Holocaust survivors (Study 1), and 154 Jewish American college students (Study 2).…”

Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning

“…Many Germans, for example, feel that they should no longer suffer for the sins of their ancestors, and resent the expectation that they should feel guilty over the Holocaust ( Ahlheim and Heger, 2002 ; Imhoff et al, 2010 ). Many Jews, on the other hand, feel that the Holocaust cannot be forgiven or forgotten and expect Germans to recognize their collective responsibility ( Cherfas et al, 2006 ). Victims of other traumas also display a greater need to remember, are more reluctant to forgive and may harbor lingering antipathies toward their former nemesis, even generations later (e.g., Olick and Levy, 1997 ; Pennebaker et al, 1997 ; Paez and Liu, 2011 ; Hanke et al, 2013 ).…”

Explaining the Inexplicable: Differences in Attributions for the Holocaust in Germany, Israel, and Poland

“…Many Germans feel, on the one hand, that they should no longer suffer for the sins of their ancestors, and they resent the expectation that they should feel guilty (Ahlheim & Heger, ; Imhoff, ; Imhoff & Banse, ). Many Israeli Jews, on the other hand, feel that the Holocaust cannot be forgiven or forgotten and expect Germans to recognize their collective responsibility (Cherfas, Rozin, Cohen, Davidson, & McCauley, ; Hoffman, ). Poles have in recent years been confronted with the uncovering of anti‐Semitic crimes during the Holocaust, revealing acts of betrayal and murder perpetrated by Poles on their Jewish neighbors (Bikont, ; Grabowski, ; Gross, ).…”