Home > Helpful Resources

RESEARCH:
Transcending Trauma: Exploring Mechanisms of Survival

Mission
Since 1991, the Transcending Trauma Project, as part of Council for Relationships Research Department, has conducted 275 in-depth life histories with Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren in order to attain a comprehensive understanding of coping and adaptation after extreme trauma. How were Holocaust survivors able to rebuild their lives after the overwhelming horror of their war experiences, the almost total loss of everyone they had known and loved, and the absolute dissolution of their former lives? The Transcending Trauma Project seeks a comprehensive answer to this question.

The answer to this question will not only provide important information about the human response to extreme trauma, it will also provide the knowledge essential for the effective treatment of victims of group trauma around the world. The exploration of intergenerational family responses to extreme trauma is a significant contribution to the field of mental health and its mission of helping victims reconstruct their lives and provide a healthy environment for subsequent generations.

Holocaust Memorials
Holocaust museums, memorials, oral history archives and educational programs are crucially important for the documentation of history and the perpetuation of "memory" - in memory of those who perished, in honor to those who survived, in tribute to those who rescued them, and to ensure that the world will never again stand by while perpetrators of genocide wage war against masses of innocents. Society must engage in these endeavors, but it isn't enough. The documentation of history and the perpetuation of memory can't suffice. We must learn the lessons of survival, which teach us how to affirm life, transcend the painful aftermath and reconstruct a meaningful future even in the face of great adversity.

Beyond Memorial: Life Lessons
Survivors of the Holocaust have much to teach us about life in addition to bearing witness to horror and death. Their stories do not begin with the war, although that is often where historians begin to ask questions. Their stories begin with grandparents and the generations that preceded them. Survivors were not blank slates before the Holocaust enveloped them. They were human beings with full and vibrant lives. When they were liberated from the crematoria, work camps, forests and hiding places and experienced the loss of everything they knew and held dear, what sustained them? The inner core of self has great endurance and most survivors rebuilt their lives by affirming the legacies of the past. We have come to realize that they were sustained and guided by the internalization of their loved ones and the meaning of their lost lives that they held inside. These are the stories that need to be told and the Transcending Trauma Project is committed to this mission.

Beyond the Holocaust
The Transcending Trauma Project brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of three generations of Holocaust survivor families. By exploring the experiences of survivor families from the inside out, in their own words, with their own attributions of meaning and importance, we have a unique view of the struggle to rebuild life, how it works when it is successful and what happens when it fails. With this broad based perspective we come to understand not only the internal experience of survivors, but of their families as well. Our contribution to trauma studies extends beyond the Holocaust and has relevance for families enduring trauma all over the world. The knowledge gained has significance for us, as individuals, as families and as communities coping with trauma, stress and difficulty in our daily lives and responding to the extraordinary events that life thrusts upon us.

Intergenerational Transmission - The Centrality of Family
A unique contribution of TTP is the study of families. By conducting in-depth life histories with three generations of survivor families, TTP acknowledges the centrality of families in developing individual identities. Intergenerational transmission is best described by those living it, in their own words, from the inside out. TTP is unique in its inclusion of multiple members of three generations of survivor families and it is unique in the number of participants and in the depth and scope of the interviewing process.

The extraordinary repository of life narratives describes in great emotional and psychological detail how survivors coped, each in their own way; the impact on their children; and the varied legacies that have been passed on to the grandchildren. These lessons are important for all of us - for our own well-being and also to learn and show how parents influence the transmission of resilience and vulnerability to the next generation.

Topics of Inquiry
The TTP archive of 275 in-depth life histories constituting 95 Holocaust survivor families offers a rich data set of narrative testimonies that inform other areas of study including:

• Tolerance
  The project studied tolerance in victims of the Nazi Holocaust who survived attempted genocide. TTP has elucidated the relationship between qualitative family dynamics and early childhood experiences in the development of tolerance in adults who have been persecuted because of their faith and ethnicity.

• Impact on Faith
  The project investigated how belief in God and traditional practice were impacted by the Holocaust. The investigation has revealed that the process of reconstructing belief systems after extreme trauma is not explained by existing psychosocial models of cognitive adaptation. The reconstruction of faith and the renewal of religious practice, in whatever form it takes, involves a complex process. It is a deeply personal journey that each survivor goes through in order to go on living in a world that has shattered all their assumptions about life. The result does not always yield a clear articulation of beliefs. Holding ambiguous forms of beliefs can be, for many survivors, the only way to incorporate their experiences into a meaningful view of the world and a sustained faith in God.

• Transmission of Identity
  The study of three generations of survivor families has enabled the team to track the intergenerational transmission of Jewish identity after the Holocaust. Based on the descriptions of personal identity and how it was influenced from generation to generation, TTP has proposed a 5 factor model of intergenerational transmission. This model has applicability to the broader Jewish Community and other ethnic groups. The key factors include clarity of beliefs, consistency of practice, qualitative family dynamics, proximity to Jewish communal life and transformative personal experiences.

• Parenting and Child Development
  The data reveal differential patterns of parenting influenced by pre-war family relationships, post-trauma vulnerability and qualities of resilience. These differential patterns of parenting impact the psychological development of children. The answer to the question of intergenerational transmission of trauma has many facets and depends on the post-traumatic functioning of the parent and the quality of the relationships established with the children.

• Impact of War Stories
  TTP's exploration of the impact of parents' war stories on the development of children has elucidated the impact of parents' pivotal narratives on the psychological process of identification. The evidence reveals a process by which children tend to identify with the values and personalities of the parents that are portrayed in the war stories and tend to relate to the quality of the parent as a role model for how to live in the world.

Donations may be given to the Transcending Trauma Project through the Council for Relationships. Please use the donation button on our website and note that your gift is for the Transcending Trauma Project.

For more information please contact:
Bea Hollander-Goldfein PhD, LMFT, Co-Project Director
      215-382-6680 x 3118   Email: bhg6@verizon.net
Nancy Isserman, PhD, Co-Project Director
      215-382-6680 x 3133   Email: isserman@temple.edu

Published Papers

“Survivors Sometimes Tell Their Stories”,
Bowen, Sheryl Perlmutter and Juliet Spitzer. Beyond Camps and Forced Labour.

“The acquisition of memory by interview questioning: Holocaust re-membering as category-bound activity.” Bartesaghi, Mariaelena, and Sheryl Perlmutter Bowen. Discourse Studies; (2009) 11; 223-243.

Political Tolerance and Intolerance:
Using Qualitative Interviews to Understand the Attitudes of Holocaust Survivors
Nancy Isserman. Contemporary Jewry, (2009) 29:21-47.

'I had no family, but I made family'.
Immediate post-war coping strategies of adolescent survivors of the Holocaust
Jennifer Goldenberg, MSS. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, March 2009, 9(1): 18-26.

Jewishness: Expression, Identity, and Representation
Bea Hollander-Goldfein, Hannah Kliger, Emilie S. Passow.
Jewish Cultural Studies, Vol.1, Oregon, 2008.

Explanations For Survival By Jewish Survivors Of The Holocaust:
Exploring The 'Hows' And The 'Whys' - The Means And The Meaning
Jennie Goldenberg, MSS. Beyond Camps and Forced Labour.

The Impact on the Interviewer of Holocaust Survivor Narratives:
Vicarious Traumatization or Transformation?
Jennie Goldenberg, MSS. Traumatology, Vol. 8, No. 4 (December 2002).

Dignity in Life, Dignity in Death:
One Perspective on the Chevra Kaddisha
Juliet Spitzer. World Council of Jewish Communal Service Quadrennial Conference, November 12-16, 2003, Jerusalem, Israel.

Papers Accepted for Publication
"Political Tolerance and Intolerance:
Using Qualitative Interviews to Study Attitudes in Holocaust Survivors,"
Nancy Isserman, Contemporary Jewry, reprinted in The Holocaust: Essays and Documents, Holocaust Studies Series of the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Social Science Monographs, ed. Randolph S. Braham, Columbia University Press, in press 2009.

Presentations at Conferences
"Innovative Qualitative Methodology with a Large Database"
Nancy Isserman, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Baltimore, November 2007.

Overview of the Transcending Trauma Project:
Towards an Integrated Model of Coping and Adaptation After Extreme Trauma
Bea Hollander-Goldfein. Bryn Mawr School of Social Work, Lichenstein Lecture, April 2002.