Living the Holocaust by the Survivors Essay example -- Germany Jews Wa

Living the Holocaust by the Survivors World War II ended in Europe on May 7, 1945, but to many survivors of the Holocaust, the war would remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not only had it brutally stripped them of their families, but also of their own humanity. As the survivors came to realizations that their families would not return to them and the initial hardships of returning to a normative life wore off, the memories of the concentration camps and the shock of brutal separation from family came flooding back into their minds. These memories often caused radical change in mental behavior and, to a degree, somaticized themselves into the â€Å"survivor’s syndrome.† (Niederland 14) The symptoms seen in â€Å"survivor’s syndrome† are what would normally be seen in a typical patient of post-traumatic stress disorder: psychological â€Å"imprint† of the disaster, anxiety, guilt, a degree of somatization, etc. (12-13). These personality changes would persist even in the rearing of the children of the survivors, to which Melvin Bukiet referred as the â€Å"Second Generation†. (13) The children wondered why their parents were not like other adults in terms of personality, behavioral quirks, obsessions, and having tattooed numbers. (14) As the Second Generation realized why their parents were the way they were, it began to feel a sense of sharing the inheritance and tried to develop coping mechanisms, such as writing and retelling, to carry on the message of their parents. (16) Art Spiegelman has developed a unique method of retelling the story of his father, Vladek, as well as his own—of his tense relationship with Vladek and his personal problems. In Maus, Spiegelman uses cartoon strips to dramatize these ... ...ut that person’s life, even branching into family life, this genre helps Artie to find his own place in history and to what degree he â€Å"owns† it. In these respects, he is truly a â€Å"real survivor† (44) in that for him, â€Å"the beginning was Auschwitz.† (Bukiet 13) Works Cited Bukiet, Melvin Jules. Nothing Makes You Free. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2002. Nielander, William G., M.D. â€Å"The Psychiatric Evaluation of Emotional Disorders in Survivors of Nazi Persecution.† Massive Psychic Trauma. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1969. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: a Survivor’s Tale. I: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: a Survivor’s Tale. II: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Trautman, (first name not known). Psychopathology of Concentration Camp Victims.