The Last Witness: Child Survivor of the Holocaust

This work looks at the traumatic effects of genocidal persecution on the child's psychic structure and on development through the life cycle. It offers information to clinicians working with Holocaust survivors and their families and should serve as a guide for therapists and interested readers who want to learn more about the short- and long-term effects of genocidal persecution. The authors have combined their early findings, based on over 1500 interviews with Holocaust survivors from all over the world, to create this volume. Through case vignettes and life histories, this book offers historical information on the Holocaust itself, the overall plight of children, superego development, and the role often played by transitional phenomena in mastering the attendant trauma and object loss. Special attention is paid to the effects of the Holocaust on children who were in hiding and the experience of adolescent children, as described in the diary of an adolescent girl. The book is intended to provide a greater understanding of how the developing child can be affected by trauma associated with persecution. Even though it is essentially about the victims in one particular instance of genocide, some of the findings may be replicated in other situations.

Table of Contents:
Children in concentration camps; hidden children - early childhood and latency; the superego in young child survivors; multisensory bridges in response to object loss; diary of an adolescent girl; child survivors as parents and grandparents; aging of children in the Holocaust; integrative effect of the research interview; children under the Nazi yoke.

Review :
" "The Last Witness" is a valuable addition to the literature not only on the Holocaust, but on the impact of massive traumatic stress in general. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Holocaust and the impact of genocide and to clinicians undertaking the treatment of Holocaust survivors or their children."- "Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry" " "The Last Witness" is accessible to a large audience, including lay people, researchers, and mental health professionals. The authors use psychoanalytic theory in a manner that illuminates survivor experience. The book will be particularly relevant to mental health professionals who work with survivors of trauma and deprivation, be they victims of political terror or familial abuse and neglect."- "Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic" "The fluid writing style, coupled with a fascinating topic, make this book a real 'page-turner, ' greatly interesting to many, including scholars, trauma survivors, and laypersons."- "Choice"