Abstract
Some 140,000 Jewish refugees from war-devastated Europe arrived on American shores after the defeat of the Nazis. Generally between the ages of 15 and 35, they spent years in concentration camps, hiding in forests, passing as gentiles in Warsaw or Berlin, or exiled in Russia. Many were the sole survivors of their families, or nearly so (Dinnerstein, 1982). They spoke a variety of different languages—Russian, Polish, German, Greek, Yiddish, and more—and had as many different conceptions of what it meant to be a Jew. What they shared was the experience of destruction, of having their once-familiar worlds ripped apart, and the challenge of reconstituting their lives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bar-On, D. (2005) “Legacy of Silence in Nazi Perpetrators’ and Holocaust Survivors’ Families”, A paper presented at Henry Schwartzman Faculty Seminar, Rutgers University, September 2005.
Bergmann, M. S. and M. E. Jucovy (eds) (1982) Generations of the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books).
Berns, N. (2011) Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
Bettleheim, B. (1979) Surviving and Other Essays (New York: Knopf).
Chaumont, J. M. (1997) The Competition of Victims: Genocide, Identity, Recognition (Paris: La Decouverte and Syros).
Cho, G. M. (2008) Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota).
Chodorow, N. (2002) “Born into a World at War: Listening for Affect and Personal Meaning”, American Imago, 59 (3), 297–315.
Cohen, B. (2007) Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).
Dinnerstein, L. (1982) America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press).
Dobbs, D. (2012) “A New Focus on the ‘Post’ in Post-Traumatic Stress”, New York Times, December 24, 2012, date accessed March 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/science/understanding-the-effects-of-social-environment-on-trauma-victims.html
Erikson, K. (1995) “Notes on Trauma and Community” in C. Caruth (ed.) Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press).
Eyerman, R. (2004) “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity” in J. C. Alexander et al. (eds) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Greenspan, H. (1998) Listening to Holocaust Survivors (St. Paul: Paragon Books).
Hartman, G. (1998) “The Vicarious Witness: Belated Memory and Authorial Presence in Recent Holocaust Literature”, History and Memory, 10 (2), 5–42.
Henry, M. (2007) Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (London and Portland: Vallentine Mitchell).
Herman, J. (1992) Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books).
Hoffman, E. (2004) After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust (Cambridge: Perseus Books).
Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. (2009) “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James’ The Art of the Novel” in D. M. Halperin and V. Traub (eds) Gay Shame (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Levi, P. (1989) “Shame” in The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage Books).
Leys, R. (2007) From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Niederland, W.G. (1968) “Clinical Observations on the ‘Survivor Syndrome’”, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49 (2), 313–315.
Novick, P. (1999) The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin).
Orgad, S. (2009) “The Survivor in Contemporary Culture and Public Discourse: A Genealogy”, The Communication Review, 12 (2), 132–161.
Scheff, T. and S. Retzinger (2000) “Shame as the Master Emotion of Everyday Life”, Journal of Mundane Behavior, 1 (3) http://www.mundanebehavior.org/issues/v1n3/scheff-retzinger.html
Sturken, M. (2007) Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (Durham: Duke University Press).
Weinberg, W. (1985) Self-Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor (Jefferson: McFarland).
Whittier, N. (2009) The Politics of Sexual Abuse: Emotion, Social Movements, and the State (New York: Oxford University Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Arlene Stein
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stein, A. (2014). The Shame of Survival: Rethinking Trauma’s Aftermath. In: Chancer, L., Andrews, J. (eds) The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304582_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304582_16
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-30457-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30458-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)