The Holocaust

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Recommended: Effects of the Holocaust on survivors

"If we were not an eternal people before, we are an eternal

people after the Holocaust, in both its very positive and very

negative sense. We have not only survived, we have revived

ourselves. In a very real way, we have won. We were

victorious. But in a very real way, we have lost. We'll never

recover what was lost. We can't assess what was lost. Who

knows what beauty and grandeur six million could have

contributed to the world? Who can measure it up? What

standard do you use? How do you count it? How do you

estimate it...? We lost. The world lost, whether they know it or

admit it. It doesn't make any difference. And yet we won,

we're going on." This quote is from the testimony of Fania

Fenelon. The signs and symptoms that are among the Jews

because of the Holocaust definitely characterize abnormality.

These abnormalities include the physical effects, the spiritual

effects, and the second generation.

The physical effects were enormous among the Jews. The

conditions of the camps defy description. The nutrition was

worse than inadequate and the results being the well-known

"musselmen": skeletons covered by skin. After the Jews in

prison camps were freed, their diseases were treated as well as

could be treated. Premature aging was one of the most

prominent disabling effects of survivors. Digestive tract

diseases were also very common because of the emotional

disturbances and inadequate diet during their incarceration. The

experience also placed them at risk of coronary diseases,

cerebrovascular diseases, and arteriosclerosis. All of this was

consistent with the premature aging and the atrophy of the heart

muscle due to the extreme undernourishment during captivity.

Spiritual concerns also followed the survivors of the

Holocaust. The Jews had to face up to one of the most painful

realities of all...What it means to be a Jew. They had to decide

whether or not to remain a Jew. The Holocaust had threatened

the Jewish people near extinction. A anger directed towards the

Non-Jewish world was intense because they had been persecuted

by Gentiles. The Holocaust had caused an apparently

irreversible rupture in the Jewish-Christian relations. Jews felt

and still feel enraged because their expectations of a decent

world were shattered into pieces by the most, supposedly,

civilized people in the world. "Where was God?" wrote Elie

Wiesel, a question asked many times among the Jews. They felt

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