Generations of Trauma: Victimhood and the Perpetuation of Abuse in Holocaust Survivors

This article explores the notions and mechanisms of traumatization, victimization, victimhood and the subsequent transmission of trauma. Focusing on trauma and posttraumatic stress in Holocaust survivors and their offspring, it examines three issues: the importance of the social contexts in which reconstruction of traumatic narrative and victimization takes place; the strategies of resistance to mourning during the period of acknowledged " victimhood"; the transmission of trauma that occurs when the victim perpetuates abuse and transmits trauma to the next generation. It argues that, in the absence of efficient mourning and "letting go" of the trauma, the survival mechanisms developed by the victim during the period of traumatization freeze and rigidify in a situation of relative safety that follows victimization and turn a victim into an abuser by the inevitable reversal and repetition: the very mechanisms that helped the victim survive become the vehicles of transmission.