Importance of groups in psychotherapy of Holocaust Children and in the second generation of Holocaust survivors

Literature provides many reports confirming the importance of social support in coping with traumas. Traumatic events take place in social space and disturb relationships with others, the reconstruction of relationships is possible only in the relational space. Children of Holocaust" (people of Jewish origin) experiences were extremely traumatic, they survived in the area of Holocaust. They suffer from deep depression, unsolved problems connected with mourning, sense of guilt, sense of loneliness, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, lost sense of individual safety, disturbed communication within family, areas of silence and taboo connected with Holocaust experiences, rupture of cultural transmission, lack of emotional approval to separational processes in children. These caused transgenerational trauma transmission to Survivors' children (Second Generation). Silence about Survivors' traumatic experiences in Poland was not only emotionally but also politically conditioned, and the feelings of isolation and loneliness were very intense. Practically after 1968 Jewish community disappeared and for almost twenty years Jewish subject matter vanished from cultural circulation. Social and political changes led to the Association of Holocaust Children in Poland'. Such organisations created new frames of reference, made it possible to overcome the sense of social isolation, made reconstruction of interpersonal relationships possible and prepared the basis for group psychotherapy.