A Child of Holocaust Survivors Meets the Children of Nazi Perpetrators

The Conference, Its History and Format

At the 2003 meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Society in New York City, I learned of an unusual gathering in Cyprus entitled, “Shaping the Future by Confronting the Past—Germans, Jews and Affected Others.” Immediately I knew I would attend this 2004 conference—both my parents escaped Nazi Germany and arrived in New York in the 1930s.

The conference was organized by a group of farsighted Israeli and German psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, in cooperation with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, utilizing the Tavistock interaction model adapted

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for this situation. The goal was to address the consequences of the Holocaust and apply any lessons learned to society. With much apprehension I flew to the conference in Cyprus knowing neither the Tavistock process nor any other participant.

Identity and Language

At the week-long meeting there was a curious undercurrent of a “special relationship” between Germans and Jews, mostly Israelis, forged by having been involved—with different roles—in the terrible chain of events taking place between 1933 and 1945. The “specialness” included a fascination with this history and an inability to mourn its disastrous effects, yet a desire to deal with the implications of its continuing shadowy presence. The conference reflected the gradual breakdown of the minimal contact between these groups and silence about these issues.

“Where would you like to begin?” was the question that began the first large-group meeting. A distressed German Jew complained that he wanted to be identified as a Jew, not a German nor an Israeli. Thus began interminable, daily, wide-ranging discussions of identity: individual, group, multiple, and national.

My mind wandered to the mixed feelings I have regarding the German language. My father loved the language and spoke it, my mother hated it and was ambivalent about speaking it, and I take pride in being bilingual. As a first-generation American born of German-Jewish parents, I understand German but not Hebrew and wondered: am I an American Jew or German Jew?

At the first night’s dinner I heard about the Nazi expulsion of Jewish analysts from German psychoanalytic societies, causing wounds that have not healed. My German table-mate told me how a close psychoanalyst friend of hers in Berlin responded to the invitation to attend this conference:

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“If you were Jewish, you would never have asked me that question!” Since I was confused by his utterance, she relayed the rest of his response: “You just don’t understand. Me! Going to a conference of Germans and Jews! Speaking honestly about the past! Identifying myself broadly as a German Jewish analyst! With all those Germans there! And then coming back to Germany!” For him, clearly, this seemed impossible.

Issues of Betrayal

One of the German women in our small mixed group of Germans, Israelis, and me, wept helplessly as she spoke of her mother, who “made a career of being a Nazi by being a musician for them.” Her relentless tears focused my thoughts on our shared feelings of anger, guilt, helplessness, and betrayal regarding our pasts, our parents, and those who either killed or were killed.

As one member of our group spoke of “unfinished mourning,” another suggested that perhaps it’s not about mourning but rather “murder without reparation.” I wondered if all murder is that; there is never reparation for the murdered although mourning must occur. Psychoanalytically speaking, we know we must mourn in order to lessen the splitting within the psyche—what Tavistock colleagues named “the all-or-nothing” psychic position. If we don’t, won’t, or can’t mourn, we get stuck in the all-good-or-all-bad nothing-in-between position. To heal we must grieve as we relinquish our fantasies of perfection and accept ambiguity and imperfection. At that point, growth occurs and acceptance is achieved.

So, there I was agreeing with another teary-eyed German woman whose parents were in the SS. She wept with frustration that she could get no answers from her parents or extended family about what had happened. She spent her life asking, “What were you doing back then?” Talking together

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is considerably better than sitting in the conspiracy of silence that reigned for so long, impacting us, the innocent inheritors of the Holocaust. I felt close to this stranger, but I couldn’t even come close to crying, although three of the German women in our group cried.

Instead, I thought of my father’s 32 relatives who died in concentration camps, remembering my parents’ warning that latent anti-Semitism is always present, everywhere. We Jews are the “Others” through so much of history. I began to feel my identification with my German cohort at the conference was a betrayal of my own history, including my ancestors, my uncle and aunt who fled their burning house in the middle of the night with two young children. Was I betraying the memory of the Jews of my father’s village in Bohemia (currently the Czech Republic)? They are all gone, and its Jewish cemetery is hidden from view behind bushes, off the main road.

Pain and Suffering, Longing and Belonging

Extensive talk of “violence,” “murderousness,” and “pain” occurred during the week. There was also a yearning to belong, stemming from fragmentation and detachment. It appeared that Germans felt guilty while Jews felt amputated from their past. What else, we asked, might be missing here?

In the end there was universal hostility, confusion, and pain. I listened to the Germans cry about not being able to talk to their parents and carrying the confusing burden of simply being born German—wishing to deny their own national identity. That is pain, and whether it is Jewish pain or German pain, pain is pain.

I found myself confused, particularly about my allegiance to the Germans’ suffering through my familiarity with their language and my uncertain identity with the Israelis who have always been an important part of my personal Jewish history. I also felt some new possibilities in this emo-

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tional turmoil. Perhaps I, and others like me, might be able to function as intermediaries in the division between Israelis and Germans trying so hard to speak to each other. Could we offer the possibility of an alternative to find a way out of the dichotomy of German or Israeli?

The groups defined at this gathering were deeply entrenched, though the participants had the remarkable courage to face this human dilemma and explore ways to overcome it. It is still so difficult for Germans and Israelis to dialogue. The fears emanating from history are so ingrained in members of each group. Universally, they are attached to the fears of the unknown, fears of change, and fears of being betrayed or becoming the betrayer.

Strange Connections

At the end of the emotionally exhausting week, my mother called from New York. I risked sharing with her my surprising experience of identifying with the pain of the second-generation Germans suffering with the silence of their parents and their confusion about their own identity and history. I hoped my mother could understand, recognizing that I was asking a lot of her. In Nazi Germany her life had closed in on her. For example, Jews could no longer go to the movies, an image I could grasp even as a child. To survive she had to get on a boat alone and afraid, and leave her home in Frankfurt in 1936 at 22 years of age to come to America. She listened intently on the phone and surprised me by saying she understood. She understood despite losing uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends to torture and death. It was a moment of deep connection for the two of us.

As an American Jew remembering my parents’ gratitude and love of America, I am still the child of refugees who feels the need to bridge the culture, history, and life of the past while melding gracefully into the present. Prior to my week in Cyprus, I never knew or considered the ongoing suf-

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fering of the children of perpetrators. This was a new and profound reminder that coming together and sitting face-to-face can elicit compassion and understanding. In this case, even for those associated with anti-Semitism and the Holocaust itself.

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