Echoes of the Holocaust : prevailing themes of survivors and their children

Includes bibliographical references (pages 166-171)Research on Holocaust survivors and their children has been traditionally conducted on clinical populations or those individuals or families being treated for psychological problems and difficulties. This study has attempted to broaden the scope of knowledge in this field by exploring some issues, problems and coping styles of a non-clinical population of Holocaust survivors and their adult children.\ud Ten families participated in the study. Within each family, one child and one or both parents whenever possible, were interviewed separately. Altogether, 10 children and 13 parents were interviewed. The children ranged in age from 19 to 32. The parents ranged in age from 50 to 70.\ud The purpose of the study was to learn whether disrupted youth in the survivors affected their own children's youth with respect to the specific issues of autonomy, guilt and coping. In their relationships with their parents the majority of children interviewed felt an uncomfortable closeness or a sense of being overinvolved with their parents and a perception of being overcontrolled by them. These were the autonomy-related problems of most concern to the children. (See more in text.