thesis statement for holocaust survivors

“And the Ones that Survived had Hope”: Resilience in Holocaust Survivors

• Melissa L. Morgan University of California Santa Barbara
• Veronica Franco University of California Santa Barbara
• Erick Felix University of California Santa Barbara
• Nicole M. Ramirez University of California Santa Barbara

The current study uses a strengths-based lens to explore the resilience narratives of five Holocaust survivors and their perspectives on experiences of resilience during and after the Holocaust. UsingInterpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), transcripts of one to one and a half hour interviews were analyzed by a team of three researchers. Overarching emergent themes included: Definition of Resilience, Adversities, Attitude After Overcoming Adversity, Method of Resilience, Adhering to Cultural Values, and Beliefs About Others’ Experience of Resilience. Subthemes and tertiary categories also evolved and are discussed. Findings are interpreted with the acknowledgement of systemic oppression and overcoming, including participants’ development critical consciousness (Freire, 1975/2000). Implications for current societal circumstances and issues are discussed.

How to Cite

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Copyright (c) 2022 Melissa L. Morgan, Veronica Franco, Erick Felix, Nicole M. Ramirez

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By submitting to JSACP, the author(s) agree to the terms of the Author Agreement . Beginning in 2018, all authors retain copyrights associated with their article contributions and agree to make such contributions available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license upon publication in JSACP. Copyrights to articles published prior to 2018 have been transferred from the authors to JSACP.

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Visual Essay: Holocaust Memorials and Monuments

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How do we keep history alive in our communities? Which events and people are worth remembering, and why? Memorials and monuments reflect, in part, the ways that communities and individuals have answered these questions. The gallery of images below exhibits a variety of memorials and monuments that have been constructed to remember the Holocaust. The introduction that follows explores the complex questions that memorials raise about how we choose to remember history.

Holocaust Memorials and Monuments

Explore images of memorials and monuments to the Holocaust located in Europe and the United States.

Introduction to the Visual Essay

Across Europe, and even around the globe, people have built memorials to commemorate the Holocaust. Each tries to preserve the collective memory of the generation that built the memorial and to shape the memories of generations to come. This visual essay explores several examples of memorials and monuments to the Holocaust and other histories of mass violence. We use the terms monuments and memorials more or less interchangeably. Some people distinguish between the two, saying that memorials are a response to loss and death and that monuments are more commemorative and celebratory in nature. However, when considering traditional memorials and monuments, there are so many exceptions to these definitions that here we will use the terms more loosely.

Memorials raise complex questions about which history we choose to remember. If a memorial cannot tell the whole story, then what part of the story, or whose story, does it tell? Whose memories, whose point of view, and whose values and perspectives will be represented? Memorials must also respond to the question, “Why should we remember?” Writing of memorials in Germany, Ian Buruma distinguishes between a Denkmal , a monument built to glorify a leader, an event, or the nation as a whole, and a Mahnmal , a “monument of warning.” Holocaust memorials, he says, are “monuments of warning.” 1

Memorial makers must also decide how to express complex ideas in the visual vocabulary available to them. Shape, mass, material, imagery, location, and perhaps some words, names, or dates can communicate a memorial’s message. Legal scholar Martha Minow asks,

Should such memorials be literal or abstract? Should they honor the dead or disturb the very possibility of honor in atrocity? Should they be monumental, or instead disavow the monumental image, itself so associated with Nazism? Preserve memories or challenge as pretense the notion that memories ever exist outside the process of constructing them? 2

Some observers wonder if memorials might have unintended consequences, undermining the memories that they are meant to preserve. Critic James Young has said of memorials, “It’s a big rock telling people what to think; it’s a big form that pretends to have a meaning, that sustains itself for eternity, that never changes over time, never evolves—it fixes history, it embalms or somehow stultifies it.” 3 Young has suggested that memorials might actually let viewers become more passive and forgetful, because they “do our memory work for us.” 4 Can monuments suggest closure when none exists and consequently insulate us from history or anesthetize us rather than engaging and challenging us?

With these concerns in mind, some artists have created “counter-memorials” that are designed to change over time, to create an awareness of something that is missing, or even to disappear, provoking viewers to question, think, and connect more actively. In Kassel, Germany, artist Horst Hoheisel created a counter-memorial on the site of a majestic, pyramid-shaped fountain that had been given to the city by a Jewish entrepreneur; the original fountain was demolished by the Nazis in 1939. Rather than restore it, Hoheisel created an underground fountain that is the mirror image of the one the Nazis destroyed. Hoheisel explained:

I have designed the new fountain as a mirror image of the old one, sunk beneath the old place in order to rescue the history of this place as a wound and as an open question, to penetrate the consciousness of the Kassel citizens so that such things never happen again . . . The sunken fountain is not the memorial at all. It is only history turned into a pedestal, an invitation to passersby who stand upon it to search for the memorial in their own heads. For only there is the memorial to be found. 5

Connection Questions

• As you explore the images in the visual essay, consider what message each memorial conveys. Who created and authorized the memorial? Who is the audience for this message? How is the message conveyed? Whose story is the memorial telling? What might the memorial be leaving out?
• What are some key differences among the memorials pictured in the gallery above? What do they have in common? Which one speaks to you most strongly?
• Memorials have many different kinds of goals, including telling an accurate story of the past, expressing nationalist ideas, honoring life, confronting evil, and encouraging reconciliation. Do you see any of these goals reflected in the memorials in the visual essay? What other goals might these memorials reflect?
• What are James Young’s criticisms of memorials? Do any of the memorials in this visual essay reflect his concerns?
• What memorials and monuments do you pass in your daily life? Do they have an impact on you? Why or why not?
• 1 Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 202.
• 2 Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998), 141.
• 4 James E. Young, “ Memory and Counter-Memory ,” Harvard Design Magazine , Fall 1999, accessed June 3, 2016.
• 5 Quoted in James E. Young, “ Memory and Counter-Memory ,” Harvard Design Magazine , Fall 1999, accessed June 3, 2016.

How to Cite This Reading

Facing History & Ourselves, “ Visual Essay: Holocaust Memorials and Monuments ”, last updated August 2, 2016.

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HIST 3727: History of the Holocaust

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Primary Source Databases & Archives

Below is a list of some of main primary source databases for Holocaust Studies.  For databases covering historical news, see  Find News .  

• Eichmann Trial Recordings Video recordings from the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, which took place in Jerusalem. Videos on this YouTube channel include simultaneous audio translation into English.
• Klemperer Online: Tagebcher 19181959 Complete and unabridged diaries of German Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer from 1918 to 1959 which provide historical account of daily life during Germanys Weimar Republic, Third Reich, Holocaust/Shoah, post-war years.
• Leo Baeck Institute Collections The LBI collects, archives and digitizes sources on the history of German-speaking Jews. Related to Holocaust history are private collections of survivors and of refugees, as well as media publications and administrative records from Nazi Germany. Vast amounts of their holdings are available for viewing online.
• Visual History Archive A fully streaming video collection of more than 55,000 primary source testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Armenian Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Central African Republic Conflict, contemporary antisemitism, the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Guatemalan Genocide, and the Nanjing Massacre. Note: only available remotely to UMN users. See Visual History Archive Online (version for non-UMN users).
• Testaments to the Holocaust. Documents and Rare Printed Materials from the Wiener Library, London This link opens in a new window Search the archives of the Wiener Library, London, the first archive to collect evidence of the Holocaust and the anti-semitic activities of the German Nazi Party contains eyewitness accounts, photographs, books and more. 75% is in German.
• Nuremberg Trials Project The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials.
• UMN Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies' Digital Collections Collections related to the Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, and other genocides. In particular: Portraying Memories - Portraits & Conversations Survivors of the Shoah.
• Yad Vashem's Digital Collections Digital archive of documents, photos related to the Holocaust/Shoah. Also includes links to databases about victims, deportation, the Righteous, and more.
• EuroDocs Shoah (Holocaust) Links to primary historical documents covering the Holocaust/Shoah and Anti-Semitism. The sources are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. Video, sound files, maps, photographs and other imagery, databases, and other documentation are also available.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Collections Portal to search through USHMM collections of artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more covering the Holocaust. Note: some materials are only available on site at the museum.

UMN Archives and Special Collections on the Holocaust

Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine records . Verbatim, unedited transcripts of the trial proceedings for the State of Israel vs. John (Ivan) Demjanjuk in the Jerusalem District Court, 1987-1988.  Demjanjuk, a suspected Nazi war criminal, stood trial for operating a gas chamber at the Treblinka camp in Poland.

Amos S. Deinard papers . ( Partially digitized ) Series 3 of the collection is comprised of pamphlets and publications related to topics that interested Deinard, namely anti-Semitism and Zionism. Some of the titles are from the 1930s-40s and discuss the rising persecution of Jews in Germany under the Nazis.

Association for Voluntary Sterilization records .( Partially digitized ) Clippings on sterilization in Nazi Germany and discussion of the impact on Nazi sterilization programs and its effects on sterilization movement in the US.

Esther Winthrop papers . Reminisces on her Greek family, many of whom were lost during the Holocaust. Esther survived the war in Greece hidden and for a time in an orphanage.

David and Genia Levi papers, 1946-1979 . This collection consists of the papers of David and Genia Levi, Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the United States in 1950, eventually settling in St. Paul, Minnesota. These papers mostly deal with the Levi's efforts for reparations from the German government.

Flori Loew papers . Contains correspondence (in German) and personal papers during her flight from Germany under Nazi persecution, traveling to Italy and England before settling in Minneapolis.

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum records . ( Partially digitized ) A number of exhibitions touch upon the Holocaust.

Fred K Hoehler papers . ( Partially digitized ) Director, Division of Displaced Persons, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 1944-1945.  UNRRA related  files dating from 1943-1953 document  services for and repatriation of displaced persons, including displaced Jewish survivors of the war, as well as genocide prevention, displaced persons camps, and conditions of the Jewish community in Germany.

German Propaganda Collection . The collection includes propaganda leaflets, newspapers, booklets, pamphlets, stickers and postcards distributed by various political parties in Germany, including the Nazi period.

Gisela Konopka papers . Includes a talk given at the University of Minnesota: “Resisting the Holocaust: a personal account,” focusing on Konopka’s formative experience with the Nazi resistance inside Germany, including time spent in a German concentration camp.

Harold C. Deutsch papers . A professor of History who worked as an interrogator of German war criminals at Nuremberg, this collection includes transcripts from Nazi interrogations.

Herman Stein papers . A leader in social work education, he worked with the American Joint Distribution Committee in Europe and North Africa in 1947 to assist survivors of the Holocaust and other displaced persons.

International Social Service, American Branch records . Of interest is materials on the United States Committee for the Care of European Children, Inc., 1945-1956 documenting rescue, transportation and foster care or adoption of children fleeing the war or post-war conditions in Europe. Access Restrictions.

Jewish Community Relations Council records . Records documenting their efforts in providing Holocaust education via Tolerance Minnesota and in leading local Yom HaShoah commemorations.

Jewish Community Relations Council / Anti-Defamation League Holocaust Oral History project records . This collection consists of taped oral histories and transcripts from Minnesota Holocaust survivors and liberators, a project funded by the Jewish Community Relations Council/Anti-Defamation League, which resulted in the publication Witnesses to the Holocaust: an oral history by Rhoda G. Lewin.

Mary Markreich Schwarz papers . Includes passports and documents allowing her to leave Germany in 1938 for Trinidad and Tobago, from where she eventually immigrated to St. Paul.

Max Lowenthal Papers . Includes files reflecting Lowenthal’s sponsorships of numerous European Jews who applied for travel visas during the Nazi rule in Germany and occupation of Poland and Hungary.

Michael Engel oral history . Engel was a Holocaust survivor; was interviewed by Rabbi Jonathan Perlman as part of his own Yom HaShoah project.

Mount Zion Temple Oral History records . ( Partially digitized ) Includes eight oral histories from Holocaust survivors.

National Conference of Christians and Jews records . ( Partially digitized ) Records document the efforts to reconcile Christian actions during the Holocaust and to commemorate the events of the Holocaust. The records also contain information on genocide treaties, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.

National Italian American Foundation records . Series nine is comprised of materials documenting the organization’s initiative to highlight the efforts of Italian officers to free or protect Jews living in areas occupied by the Italian Army during World War II.  Some materials in Italian.

Ollie Randall papers . ( Partially digitized ) Includes records for the Newark House of New Jersey Fellowship Fund for the Aged, a house that provided shelter and services for elderly survivors of the Holocaust.

Robert O. Meyer papers . Details his emigration to the United States to join the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at the University of Minnesota after his position at the University of Berlin was eliminated in 1935 because of his Jewish ancestry.

Robert Winston Ross papers . Includes papers regarding his 1980 publication So It Was True: The American Protestant Press and the Nazi Persecution of the Jews which explores the theory that American Protestant churches were cognizant of the events surrounding World War II and the Holocaust.

United Way of Minneapolis records . ( Partially digitized ) Of particular interest is the United States Committee on Care of European Children 1940-1942.

World War Poster Collection . ( Fully digitized ) Includes German Election posters from 1932 including Nazi posters.

Finding Primary Sources in the Library Catalog

Additional primary source materials can be found by searching the University of Minnesota Libraries' Catalog . Enter one of the terms below and keywords of the event as subject keywords.

• "personal narratives" (Example: "holocaust" and "personal narratives" ) 
• "sources"
• "documentary film" 
• "interviews" 
• "correspondence" 

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HIST B323 History of the Holocaust

• Finding Books
• Sources for Researching the Holocaust
• Develop a Research Question
• Primary Sources
• Cite Sources
• Scholarly vs Popular
• Thesis Statements

Guide created by Scott Libson. Updated in January 2024 by Catherine J. Minter. Feel free to contact Catherine if you need help.

The Holocaust

• Search Terms/Subjects
• Bibliographies
• Encyclopedias
• Scholarly Journals & Articles

Library of Congress Subject Headings:

• Anti-Nazi Movement
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Fiction
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence
• Holocaust Denial
• Holocaust Memorials
• Holocaust Survivors
• Germany--Politics and government--1933-1945.
• Germany--History--1933-1945.
• Jews--Germany--History--1933-1945.
• Jews--Persecutions--Germany.
• National Socialism
• World War, 1939-1945
• World War, 1939-1945--Concentration Camps
• Basic Bibliography of the Holocaust (Yad Vashem) Comprehensive and current, this bibliography is subdivided into various Holocaust-related topics and includes about four to twenty-five books on each topic.
• Bibliography of Holocaust Literature by Abraham J. Edelheit; Hershel Edelheit Call Number: Wells Library - Stacks -- Z6374.H6 E33 1986 (a second copy with the same call number is in the Wells Library Reference Reading Room) ISBN: 081337233X Publication Date: 1986-11-09 This is a massive, if dated, bibliography of English-language materials on the Holocaust. It includes an author index, introductory essays, and some annotations. See also the Edelheits' supplement , with 6,500 additional entries, published in 1990.
• The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust by Donald L. Niewyk; Francis R. Nicosia Call Number: E-book, also available in print: Wells Library - Stacks -- D804.3 .N54 2000 ISBN: 9780231505901 Publication Date: 2000 This invaluable resource provides a multidimensional survey of the Holocaust, essentially integrating five separate books into one comprehensive reference tool: a historical overview; a guide to Holocaust controversies; an A-to-Z encyclopedia of people, places, and terms; a chronology; and a comprehensive resource guide. Whether used separately for their individual merits or approached as an integrated whole, the five sections of this informative volume constitute an indispensable contribution to the study of the Holocaust.
• European Jewish Research Archive A free-to-use and comprehensive repository of social research on European Jews since 1990.
• The Oryx Holocaust Sourcebook by William R. Fernekes Call Number: Wells Library - Reference Reading Room -- Z6374.H6 F47 2002 ISBN: 1573562955 Publication Date: 2002-05-30 The Oryx Holocaust Sourcebook provides a comprehensive selection of high quality resources in the field of Holocaust studies. The Sourcebook's 17 chapters cover general reference works; narrative histories; monographs in the social sciences; fiction, drama, and poetry; books for children and young adults; periodicals; primary sources; electronic resources in various formats; audiovisual materials; photographs; music; film and video; educational and teaching materials; and information on organizations, museums, and memorials. In addition, each chapter begins with a concise overview essay.

An extensive bibliography compiled by scholars in Jewish Studies and related fields.

Selective bibliography of academic articles covering all of the fields of Jewish studies as well as the study of Eretz Israel and the State of Israel. RAMBI is based largely on the collections of the National Library of Israel. Includes references to articles in Hebrew, Latin, or Cyrillic letters.

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Bibliographies The bibliographies "list only materials that are in the Museum Library’s collection or available online. They are not meant to be exhaustive. In most cases, annotations are provided to help the user determine each item’s focus, and call numbers for the Museum’s Library are given in parentheses following each citation."
• Children of the Holocaust by Paul R. Bartrop; Eve E. Grimm Call Number: E-book ISBN: 9781440868535 Publication Date: 2020 This important reference work highlights a number of disparate themes relating to the experience of children during the Holocaust, showing their vulnerability and how some heroic people sought to save their lives amid the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime. In addition to more than 125 entries, this book features 10 illuminating primary source documents, ranging from personal accounts to Nazi statements regarding what the fate of Jewish children should be to statements from refugee leaders considering how to help Jewish children after World War II ended.
• The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust by Shmuel Spector (Editor); Geoffrey Wigoder (Editor); Elie Wiesel (Introduction by) Call Number: Wells Library - Reference Reading Room -- DS135.E8 E45 2001 ISBN: 0814793568 Publication Date: 2001-07-01 "Today throughout much of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, only fragmentary remnants of once thriving Jewish communities can be found as evidence of more than two thousand years of vibrant Jewish presence among the nations of the world. These communities, many of them ancient, were systematically destroyed by Hitler's forces during the Holocaust. Yet each of their stories-from small village enclaves to large urban centers-is unique in its details and represents one of the countless intertwined threads that comprise the rich tapestry of Jewish history. The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust captures these lost images. In three volumes, it chronicles the people, habits and customs of more than 6,500 Jewish communities that thrived during the early part of the twentieth century only to be changed irrevocably by the war."
• Encyclopedia of the Holocaust by Schmuel Spector (Editor); Robert Rozett (Editor) Call Number: Wells Library - Reference Reading Room -- D804.25 .E53 2000 ISBN: 0816043337 Publication Date: 2000 Written in association with Yad Vashem, this encyclopedia features eight essays on the Holocaust on such topics as the history of European Jewry, Jewish achievements and contributions to European culture, and the rise of antisemitism.
• The Holocaust: an Encyclopedia and Document Collection [4 Volumes] by Paul R. Bartrop (Editor); Michael Dickerman (Editor) Call Number: E-book, also available in print: Wells Library - Undergraduate Services - Core Collection -- D804.25 .H655 2017 ISBN: 9781440840845 Publication Date: 2017 This four-volume set provides reference entries, primary documents, and personal accounts from individuals who lived through the Holocaust that allow readers to better understand the cultural, political, and economic motivations that spurred the Final Solution.

An encyclopedia with extra features concerning the Holocaust and the principal figures involved.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia includes items on all aspects of the Holocaust and the central figures involved in the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jewish population of Europe. In addition to the searchable entries of the Encyclopedia itself, the site, sponsored by the National Holocaust Museum, includes historical films, photographs,lists of book titles and scholarly journals, and guides to archival resources, among them a guide to oral histories. There are additional materials, such as a search of identity numbers, with biographies, and resources for the study of genocide in general.

• The Holocaust Encyclopedia by Walter Laqueur (Editor); Judith Tydor Baumel Call Number: E-book, also available in print: Wells Library - Reference Reading Room -- D804.25 .H66 2001 ISBN: 0300084323 Publication Date: 2001 The Holocaust has been the subject of countless books, works of art, and memorials. Fifty-five years after the fact the world still ponders the enormity of this disaster. The Holocaust Encyclopedia is the only comprehensive single-volume work of reference providing both a reflective overview of the subject and abundant detail concerning major events, policy decisions, cities, and individuals.
• Holocaust Survivors by Emily Taitz (Editor) Call Number: Wells Library - Undergraduate Services - Core Collection -- D804.3 .T34 2007 ISBN: 9780313336768 Publication Date: 2007 Although there are more and more Holocaust memoirs on the market, this essential collection is the first to present such a large number of biographical profiles of survivors for a broad readership. Holocaust Survivors: A Biographical Dictionary comprises 278 entries on more than 500 survivors of the World War II genocide. The profiles, averaging 500 words, are mostly of Jews, both individuals and family members, from throughout Europe. Organized alphabetically, the essays cover their background, circumstances and ordeals during the war, aftermath, and life achievements, including family and career. Most are on ordinary people who have extraordinary life stories.

Presents comprehensive information and documents on modern genocide, focusing on the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

Includes more than 300 primary sources such as memoirs, narratives, and domestic and international legal documents that illustrate the progression and outcome of genocide, as well as first-hand accounts that depict its impact on entire societies as well as on the lives of individuals.

• Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, Enablers, and Collaborators by Paul R. Bartrop; Eve E. Grimm Call Number: E-book, also available in print: ISBN: 9781440858970 Publication Date: 2019 Weaving together a number of disparate themes relating to Holocaust perpetrators, this book shows how Nazi Germany propelled a vast number of Europeans to try to re-engineer the population base of the continent through mass murder.
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume I by Geoffrey P. Megargee (Editor) Call Number: E-book, also available in print: Wells Library - Stacks -- D805.A2 U55 2009 ISBN: 9780253353283 Publication Date: 2009 The Nazis and their allies ran more than 44,000 camps, ghettos, and other sites of detention, persecution, forced labor, and murder during the Holocaust. Few people know about the breadth of the Nazi camp system and the conditions in those places—including the broad range of prisoner experiences. The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 , aims to answer basic questions about as many of those sites as possible. As of July 2020, three of the expected seven volumes have been published. Volumes I and II are available for free from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum . The link above goes to the IUCAT record for volume I. Here are the links for volume II and volume III .

Freely Available Websites:

• Guide to Holocaust Websites List created by Professor Mark Roseman. Largely primary sources, but also many secondary sources.
• AHEYM: The Archive of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories The Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories (AHEYM—the acronym means "homeward" in Yiddish) includes approximately 800 hours of Yiddish-language interviews with 350 individuals, most of whom were born between 1900 and 1930. The interviews were conducted in Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and Slovakia. The interviews include: linguistic and dialectological data; oral histories of Jewish life in Eastern Europe; Holocaust testimonials; musical performances (including Yiddish folk songs, liturgical and Hasidic melodies, and macaronic songs); folklore, including anecdotes, jokes, stories, children's ditties, folk remedies, and Purim plays; reflections on contemporary Jewish life in the region, and; guided tours by local residents of sites of Jewish memory in the region.
• Arolsen Archives The Arolsen Archives are an international center on Nazi persecution with the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of National Socialism. The collection has information on about 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s Memory of the World. It contains documents on the various victim groups targeted by the Nazi regime and is an important source of knowledge for society today.
• Duane Mezga Holocaust Sites Photograph Collection The Duane Mezga Holocaust Sites photograph collection consists of 682 digitized Kodachrome 64 color slides. Almost all of the photographs were taken in 1992, of concentration camps and other historically significant sites related to the Holocaust. Twenty-one sites in Austria, then-Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland are included. The photographs were taken using the progressive-realization technique, which captures the experience of walking through a site. Memorials present at these sites were a focus of the documentation.
• Holocaust Denial on Trial Documents the trial of David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt.
• Nuremberg Trials Project The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials.
• Pogrom: November 1938--Testimonies from Kristallnacht (Wiener Library) In the months following November 1938, Alfred Wiener and his colleagues at the Central Jewish Information Office in Amsterdam collected over 350 contemporary testimonies and reports of the November Pogrom in Germany and Austria. These documents are now available here, for the first time in English.
• Simon Wiesenthal Center Digital Archives The Digital Archives images are owned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and Archives. The Archives database and low-resolution images are available here.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Digitized Collections Includes interviews, objects, newspapers, books, and many other types of material. You can also limit results based on events, cities, camps, and ghettos.
• Yad Vashem Documents Archive Includes posters, personal documentation, official documentation, lists, letters, memoirs, testimonies, diaries, and legal documentation. Advanced search allows you to limit results to English-language documents.
• Yizkor Books at the New York Public Library Yizkor (memorial) books document Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Most yizkor books are in Hebrew and/or Yiddish. Most are available for download.
• Conditions & Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945 Features full-text documents received in the British Foreign Office from all European states under Nazi occupation during World War II.

The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Please note: To access users need to create an account and submit a request.  Click more for instructions to create account and submit request, as well as more details about the archive.

The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with thirty-six affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions). Create Account & Request Testimony: 1. To create an account select Log In, and then Join Now. Users will then receive a confirmation email. 2. Login and then enter a search term. Click on a testimony in the search results and request access. Please note that records truncate last names of those who gave testimony to protect their privacy. If you are looking for a specific person’s testimony, either shorten their last name to the first initial (“Eva B.”) or contact the archive directly. You only need to request access to one testimony to obtain viewing access for the entire collection. 3. Once the approval email is received, users may view testimonies. A browser refresh may be necessary.

Digital access to 170 German-language titles of books and pamphlets. The collection presents anti-Semitism as an issue in politics, economics, religion, and education.

Most of the writings date from the 1920s and 1930s and many are directly connected with Nazi groups. The works are principally anti-Semitic, but include writings on other groups as well, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesuits, and the Freemasons. Also included are history, pseudo-history, and fiction.

Human Rights Studies Online is a research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010.

The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects.

Digital archive covering all aspects of 20th-century human migration. includes firsthand accounts from reputable sources around the world, covering such important events as post-World War II Jewish resettlement, South African apartheid, Latin American migrations to the United States and much more.

Contains reports gathered every day between the early 1940s and 1996 by a U.S. government organization that became part of the CIA . These include translated and English-language radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, periodicals and government documents, as well as an analysis of the reports.

Access to primary source documents on the Nationalist Socialist State and the NSDAP, Nazi ideology and propaganda, National Socialist justice and legislation, resistance and persecution, and annihilation and expulsion in the "Third Reich."

Approximately 40,000 primary sources, including: administration files and correspondence from the highest authorities of the Third Reich, especially from the party chancellery of the NSDAP ; situation and status reports of the secret state police authorities from the Reich and the annexed and occupied territories ; Adolf Hitler’s speeches, writings and orders from 1925 to 1945 ; the diaries of Joseph Goebbels from 1923 to 1945 ; indictments and judgements of the Nazi People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) and the Higher Regional Courts of Vienna and Graz ; programmatic writings, speeches, political testaments, camouflaged writings and leaflets by opponents of the regime and emigrants; expatriation and deportation lists ; the previously unpublished card index on the Nuremberg war criminal trials.

Digital access to documents covering the diplomatic, legal and political maneuvering during and after World War II regarding German art looting in Europe, recovery of cultural objects dispersed during World War II, efforts by the U.S. and other Allied Powers to prevent the secreting of Axis assets, claims from victims for financial or property restitution from the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), other claims cases, and meeting minutes and background materials regarding the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold.

An archive of primary source documents, covering the repatriation and emigration of the Displaced Persons and survivors of the Holocaust and World War II.

Files include original reports on orphans and Unaccompanied Children Under UNRRA Care, Voluntary Societies British Zone Monthly Reports, 1949-, Welfare Work Amongst Jewish Prison Inmates, DPs in Assembly Stations, 1950, Displaced persons and prisoners of war to and from Italy, Complaints about Russian refugees and displaced persons (DPs); allegations of mistreatment of Soviet nationals, and Repatriation and disposal of prisoners of war, surrendered personnel, displaced persons etc.

The USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive allows users to search through and view the 51,537 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide currently available in the Archive that were conducted in 61 countries and 39 languages. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Visual History Archive has expanded to include testimonies from the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China and the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide. Please note: authorized IUB users may register for an account with their iu.edu email address. Users must accept vendor terms of use to complete registration process.

Digital access to the archives of the Wiener Library, London, the first archive to collect evidence of the Holocaust and the anti-semitic activities of the German Nazi Party.

Includes documentary evidence collected in several different programmes: the eyewitness accounts which were collected before, during and after the Second World War, from people fleeing the Nazi oppression, a large collection of photographs of pre-war Jewish life, the activities of the Nazis, and the ghettoes and camps, a collection of postcards of synagogues in Germany and eastern Europe, most since destroyed, a unique collection of Nazi propaganda publications including a large collection of 'educational' children's' books, and the card index of biographical details of prominent figures in Nazi Germany, many with portrait photographs. Pamphlets, bulletins and journals published by the Wiener Library to record and disseminate the research of the Institute are also included.

Online access to over 500,000 pages of previously classified government documents.

Declassified Documents Reference Service provides searching and fulltext access to declassified U.S. government documents. Covering major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond, this single source enables users to locate key information underpinning studies in international relations, American studies, United States foreign and domestic policy studies, journalism and more.

Digital access to correspondence, reports and analyses, memos of conversations, and personal interviews exploring such themes as U.S.-Vatican relations, Vatican’s role in World War II, Jewish refugees, Italian anti-Jewish laws during the papacy of Pius XII, and the pope’s personal knowledge of the treatment of European Jews.

Includes materials on political affairs, Jewish people, refugee and relief activities, German-owned property in Rome, property rights, and the Vatican Bank. In addition, there are materials on Axis diplomats, war criminals, protocols and religious statements, and records of the peace efforts of the Vatican.

Digital access to documents related to WWII, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Map Room Files, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of the War Department Operations Division, U.S. Navy Action and Operational Reports, Records of the Office of War Information, Papers of the War Refugee Board, George C. Marshall Papers, FBI Files on Tokyo Rose, Manhattan Project documents, Potsdam Conference Documents, and records on lend-lease.

• Archives of the Holocaust : an international collection of selected documents by Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (general editors) Call Number: Wells Library - Research Coll. - D810.J4 A73 Publication Date: 1989- Contains reproductions of files and documents from a number of relief and charitable organizations dealing with the plight of the Jews during the 1930s and 1940s.

• The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 Call Number: e-books ISBN: 9783110435191 Publication Date: 2019- This landmark collection of primary sources provides unique first-hand insights into the persecution and murder of the Jews of Europe under Nazi rule. The documents, all translated from the language of the original source, range from the police orders and administrative decrees issued by the Nazi apparatus across Germany and occupied Europe to the diaries and letters of Jewish men, women, and children facing discrimination, impoverishment, violent assaults, incarceration, deportation, and death.
• The trial of German major war criminals by the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg, Germany [e-book] by H.M. Attorney-general by H.M. Stationery Off Call Number: E-book Publication Date: 1946-1951

Scholarly Journals Related to the Holocaust

• Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Call Number: Electronic resource

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This multi-disciplinary database provides full-text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.

Full-text access to a searchable online archive of academic e-journals and e-books in the Humanities and Social Sciences from and about Central and Eastern Europe.

Provides access to all journals and articles, more than 4,370 open access e-books, and over 9,400 open access grey literature items (institutional reports, working papers, government documents, white papers, etc.). Currently, the archive’s content comes from over 1400 publishers. Indiana University Libraries’ subscription does not include full access to all e-books and grey literature, so some paywalls are expected.

Full text database with a focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas.

GenderWatch is a full text database of nearly 400 periodicals and other publications that focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, and special reports.

Index to journals, chapters and theses about world history, 1450 to present.

Covers modern world history (excluding the United States and Canada which are covered in the database America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present. It currently indexes about 2,300 journals in 40 languages, with indexing also for some books and dissertations. Most of the article citations include abstracts of 75-100 words.

Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business.

JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of The Mellon Foundation, provides complete runs of hundreds of important journal titles in more than 30 arts, humanities, and social science disciplines. These scholarly journals can be browsed online and searched, and the page images can be printed for those available in full-text. The IUB Libraries subscribe to current content for only some titles available through JSTOR.  All journals in JSTOR start with the first volume. Many include content up to a "moving wall" of 3-5 years ago, although some journals have a fixed ending date for their content in JSTOR. Please check individual journals for exact dates of coverage.  For information about access to this resource for IU alumni, contact the Indiana University Alumni Association .

PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) indexes articles, books, studies, selected official documents and other resources on public policy issues, public administration, law, politics and government.

Includes journal articles, books, government documents, pamphlets and the reports of public and private bodies.  Also indexes publications in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Print source: PAIS bulletin (1915-1990), PAIS Foreign Language Index (1968-1990), PAIS International in Print (1991-)

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Provides full text access and indexing for e-journals and e-books from a variety of scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.

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• Neurobiol Stress
• v.14; 2021 May

Lifelong impact of extreme stress on the human brain: Holocaust survivors study

Monika fňašková.

a Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Brain and Mind Research Program, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

c First Department of Neurology, St. Anne's Hospital and School of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Pavel Říha

Marek preiss.

d University of New York in Prague, Czech Republic

Markéta Nečasová

Eva koriťáková.

b Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Ivan Rektor

Associated data.

All data are available upon request at the Repository CEITEC Masaryk University, MAFIL CF.

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

We aimed to assess the lifelong impact of extreme stress on people who survived the Holocaust. We hypothesised that the impact of extreme trauma is detectable even after more than 70 years of an often complicated and stressful post-war life.

Psychological testing was performed on 44 Holocaust survivors (HS; median age 81.5 years; 29 women; 26 HS were under the age of 12 years in 1945) and 31 control participants without a personal or family history of the Holocaust (control group (CG); median 80 years; 17 women). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using the 3T Siemens Prisma scanner was performed on 29 HS (median 79 years; 18 women) and 21 CG participants (median 80 years; 11 women). The MRI-tested subgroup that had been younger than 12 years old in 1945 was composed of 20 HS (median 79 years; 17 women) and 21 CG (median 80 years; 11 women).

HS experienced significantly higher frequency of depression symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and posttraumatic growth, and lower levels of well-being. The MRI shows a lifelong neurobiological effect of extreme stress. The areas with reduced grey matter correspond to the map of the impact of stress on the brain structure: insula, anterior cingulate, ventromedial cortex including the subgenual cingulate/orbitofrontal cortex, temporal pole, prefrontal cortex, and angular gyrus. HS showed good adjustment to post-war life conditions.

Psychological growth may contribute to compensation for the psychological and neurobiological consequences of extreme stress.

The reduction of GM was significantly expressed also in the subgroup of participants who survived the Holocaust during their childhood.

The lifelong psychological and neurobiological changes in people who survived extreme stress were identified more than 70 years after the Holocaust. Extreme stress in childhood and young adulthood has an irreversible lifelong impact on the brain.

1. Introduction

The Holocaust was the most traumatic man-made event in European history. In the former Czechoslovakia, the entire Jewish population suffered from this large-scale genocide, which lasted from 1938 to 1945. It started with social and professional exclusion, humiliation, and suppression of basic rights, followed by deportation to concentration camps, forced labour, and exposure to horrific atrocities, or by illegally hiding or joining partisan groups under constant threat of discovery and execution. All of the holocaust survivors (HS), independently of their age, experienced massive trauma and the post-war shock of having lost family members, including parents, children, and siblings, and the necessity of adjusting to new and difficult life circumstances.

The first studies of the effect of this extreme stress on the health of the HS noted the mental impact but focused on physical health ( Helweg-Larsen et al., 1952 ). The term ‘concentration camp syndrome’ for symptoms including emotional instability, poor concentration, and fatigue was introduced in the 1960s ( Eitinger, 1962 ).

Levav and Abramson ( Levav and Abramson, 1984 ) showed that 30 years after the war emotional distress had a higher prevalence in the former concentration camp inmates than in other European-born members of the community. Barel et al. performed a meta-analysis of 71 studies with 12,746 participants elucidating the long-term psychiatric, psychosocial, and physical consequences of the Holocaust. They found higher-level posttraumatic stress symptoms in HS but also adaptation (cognitive function, physical health, etc.) combining psychological growth with defense mechanisms ( Barel et al., 2010 ). They marked this combination of chronic stress symptoms and resilience as ‘characteristics of the symptoms of Holocaust survivors’.

Traumatic stress is manifested by changes in brain structure. The hippocampus, amygdala, cingulate, prefrontal cortex ( Arnsten et al., 2015 ; Bremner, 2003 ), and insular cortex ( Paulus and Stein, 2006 ) are often mentioned as structures that are vulnerable to the effects of stress ( Ansell et al., 2012 ; Bruce et al., 2013 ; Cohen et al., 2006 ; Kasai et al., 2008 ; Kuo et al., 2012 ; Lupien and Lepage, 2001 ; McEwen et al., 2016 ; McEwen and Morrison, 2013 ; Paulus and Stein, 2006 ; Roozendaal et al., 2009 ; Yaribeygi et al., 2017 ). Neurobiological modifications caused by stress can be linked with the development of diseases like depression ( Bremner et al., 2000 ) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ( Bremner et al., 1995 ; Logue et al., 2018 ; Villarreal et al., 2002 ). Increased vulnerability to PTSD was observed in Holocaust survivors ( Yehuda et al., 1998 ). In this study, we explored the lifelong impact of stress on brain structure using structural MRI.

The timing of stress exposure is a critical factor for the impacts of stress on brain structure and functions. A younger age during the traumatic period is linked to greater damage to personality development ( Keilson and Sarphatie, 1992 ). During development (prenatal period, childhood, adolescence) and age-dependent changes (ageing), the brain is more vulnerable to the effects of stress hormones ( Lupien et al., 2009 ). Childhood adversities are typically associated with dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and early childhood trauma can cause long lasting neurobiological and psychological deficiencies ( Dye, 2018 ).

To explore the impact of stress during development, we investigated a subgroup of HS who were under 12 years old at the end of the war in 1945. Dividing the research set at the age of 12 makes sense from a developmental point of view; according to Erikson and Erikson, the fourth stage of human life ends at the age of 12. This is the last stage before adolescence ( Erikson and Erikson, 1998 ).

The goal of this study is to assess the lifelong psychological and neurobiological impact of long-lasting extreme stress. The combination of psychological testing with brain MRI more than 70 years after the war provides unique data about the impact of extreme trauma.

Given the ages of survivors, this data probably reflects the last chance to explore the lifelong impact of this extreme trauma and directly learn from the survivors about their evaluations of a life marked by extreme stress. Data from the genetic part of this study have been partially published, including results about telomere length and mitochondrial DNA ( Cai et al., 2020 ; Konečná et al., 2019 ).

The study is based on two hypotheses: 1. We hypothesised that Holocaust survivors have had a lifelong impact on stress-related brain areas combined with psychological consequences of stress as well as signs of posttraumatic growth, identifiable despite the complicated and often stressful life in Central Europe after the war.

2. We hypothesised that the lifelong consequences of extreme stress trauma would also be expressed in people who survived the Holocaust as children, despite the fact that children have a limited ability to cognitively process life-threatening situations ( Sigal and Weinfeld, 2001 ) and the children were not exposed to direct threats of being killed, as most of them survived the Holocaust hidden in other families or institutions.

2.1. Participants and recruitment

2.1.1. research and recruitment.

The study was conducted at the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) Neuroscience Centre, at Masaryk University in Brno between 2015 and 2020. Part of the data was obtained at the National Institute of Mental Health (NÚDZ) in Klecany. The data were obtained according to the Declaration of Helsinki. The research was approved by the ethics committee at Masaryk University; informed consent was obtained from all participants.

All of the participants were of Czech or Slovak origin, i.e. people with a similar geopolitical background. The two countries formed one state – Czechoslovakia – until 1993, and the close connections between the citizens continue; the Czech and Slovak languages are mutually comprehensible.

The participants were recruited through the cooperation of local Jewish communities (the Holocaust survivors group), announcements in the media, and postings on the university website. For HS and CG recruitment, we also used personal invitations from members of the research team and the snowball sampling method. The CG was completed when the composition of HS was already clear and the CG could be matched with HS.

2.1.2. Participants characteristics

Exclusion criteria: a history of treatment for severe psychiatric disorders (such as psychosis), any kind of severe brain impairment (brain injury, tumours, neurodegenerative diseases), and significant cognitive decline (all participants scored over 26 points in the Mini-Mental State Examination) ( Solomon et al., 1998 ). Contraindications for MRI were metal implants, pacemakers, and claustrophobia.

The HS and CG groups were not significantly different in age, sex, and education; this was verified using Mann-Whitney U test. The groups were 44 HS with median age 82 (71–95) years, 29 women (66%) and 31 Czech and Slovak non-Jewish control participants not exposed to war-related trauma with median age 80 (73–90) years, 17 women (55%). Higher education had been attained by 46% of HS and 36% of CG.

The subgroup under 12 years old in 1945 was composed of 26 HS with median age 78.5 (71–84) years, 17 women (65%) and 24 control participants with median age 78 (73–84), 12 women (50%). Table with demographic group characteristics is in the supplementary material.

Participants who could not participate in MR scanning because of contraindications or who underwent MR scanning with insufficiently quality scans were excluded from the final brain images analysis.

The neuroimaging cohort was composed of 29 HS with median age 79 (72–95), 18 women (62%), and 21 control participants median age 80 (73–86), 11 women (52%). Their psychological profile resembled the profile of the whole cohort ( Table 2 ).

Psychological questionnaires: differences between Holocaust survivors (HS) and the control group (CG).

TSC: Trauma Symptom Checklist; PCLC – C: PTSD Checklist – Civilian Version; PTGI: Posttraumatic Growth Inventory; SOS – Schwartz Outcome Scale.

The neuroimaging subgroup under 12 years old in 1945 was composed of 20 HS with median age 78 (72–84), 12 women (60%), and 21 control participants median age 80 (73–86), 11 women (52%).

No gender-associated effects were found using a two-sample t -test comparing male and female data.

2.1.3. Background of examined groups

2.1.3.1. holocaust survivors group characteristics.

During the Holocaust, 24 HS were in hiding, e.g. living with a non-Jewish family in a small village, in a farmhouse, in an evangelist orphanage, or in a secret room, in their childhood or adolescence. Five HS lived under a false identity or were hiding in the mountains; some of them joined the partisan army.

Fifteen HS were imprisoned in a ghetto (most often Terezín - Theresienstadt) and/or in concentration camps (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, or Mauthausen). Several participants had survived a death march. The persecution increased over six years; the immediate danger of execution, whether after being discovered for people who were hiding or after being imprisoned in a concentration camp, lasted from six months to four years.

Most of them experienced trauma at critical developmental phases; 26 HS were aged under 12 years by the end of the war in 1945. Nineteen of them were in hiding (nine with their parents and ten without them). Seven were imprisoned in the ghetto Theresienstadt.

2.1.3.2. Control group characteristics

The Czech Republic was occupied by Nazi Germany as the Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. There was a strong oppression of the Czech population, but its majority was not directly exposed to the war events. Participants in CG were civilians and did not participate in military action or resistance; during the war, they were not under direct life-threatening danger.

Post-war life conditions under the communist regime from 1948 to 1989 were difficult and differed from the conditions in Western democracies. The regime was oppressive and often anti-Semitic, in particular in the 1950s, with a series of political processes followed by executions and long-term imprisonments. Jews experienced direct oppression, as did other groups, e.g. private farmers and entrepreneurs, Christians, intellectuals, etc. After a liberalisation period in the 1960s, ended by the Soviet army intervention in 1968, a general suppression of human rights followed for 20 years. Based on individual interviews, we can state that none of our study participants advanced their career based on membership in the Communist Party. In principle, the HS and CG suffered from the communist oppression in a more or less similar way.

2.2. Initial screening

For the initial screening, all participants were tested with the 7-min screen test ( Solomon et al., 1998 ).

The protocol consisted of interviews, psychological questionnaires, and MR scanning. In addition, participants completed the Geriatric Depression Scale test as a part of the initial screening (participants with major depression were not included in the study).

2.3. Interview

All participants, HS and CG, were asked about their life before, during, and after the war. HS were also asked how they survived the Holocaust and how long they were persecuted. In the self-report part, the HS answered a short questionnaire focused on the self-evaluation of their personal life and professional career as affected by the Holocaust.

2.4. Psychological measures

Four questionnaires testing the hypothesis of the lifelong impact of extreme stress were chosen for this study. Two tests explored the negative impact of stress, specifically posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and actual stress symptoms (PCL-C and TSC-40 respectively); one test explored the positive impact of stress (PTGI); and one test explored the subjective appreciation of actual quality of life (SOS-10).

All psychological questionnaires are summarised in detail in Table 1 .

Psychological tests.

2.4.1. Statistical analysis

The results of the psychological questionnaires were summarised using median, minimum, and maximum. For statistical testing of differences between HS and GC, a non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used. The significance level for all statistical tests was set to p < 0.05. The statistical analyses were performed using STATISTICA 12. The effect of age was tested by multiple regression.

2.5. MR imaging

2.5.1. data acquisition.

MR examinations were performed on a 3T scanner Siemens Prisma using a 64-channel head coil. The MRI protocol for voxel-based morphometry included 3D T1-weighted magnetisation prepared rapid gradient echo (MPRAGE) sequence with TR = 2.3 s, TE = 2.33 ms, TI = 0.9 s, FA = 8°, isometric voxel size 1 mm in FOV 224 × 224 mm and 240 slices.

Part of the data was obtained at a partner workplace, NÚDZ Klecany, with the same type of 3T Prisma scanner, multichannel coil, and protocol sequence.

Data from all participants were manually checked for artifacts and pathology was checked by an experienced radiologist. Participants who did not meet our quality criteria (scans without technical artifacts or lower SNR; scans without significant movement artifacts; participants with brain pathology; and scans without successfully finished segmentation and normalization into MNI space) were excluded from the study.

2.5.2. Data processing

Anatomical MRI data were analysed using SPM12 ( www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk ) and CAT12 toolbox ( www.neuro.uni-jena.de/cat ) running in Matlab R2017b.

Individual data were adjusted for spatial inhomogeneity with an intensity normalization filter and then denoised with the Non-Local Means (SANLM) denoising filter. High resolution data were then segmented into grey matter using the SPM Tissue Probability Map (TPM) and registered into common MNI space using shooting template IXI555_MNI152_GS. Finally, spatially normalised and modulated GM maps were smoothed with 6 mm FWHM isotropic Gaussian kernel.

2.5.3. Statistical analysis

Group statistics for stress effects were calculated with a second-level model using SPM12. The modulated GM images were multiplicatively corrected with total intracranial volume and then analysed. A two-sample t -test comparison of GMV files between stress group (respectively stress subgroup under 12 years of age) and the control group was performed; sex, age, and MRI machine were included as nuisance variables.

Resultant t-statistic maps were initially thresholded at a P value of <0.005 uncorrected and then only significant clusters at P < 0.05 FWE cluster level were picked.

2.5.4. Grey matter volume and PTSD checklist scale correlation

Based on the Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL) atlas ( Tzourio-Mazoyer et al., 2002 ), we selected the mean GM volume in an area consisting of the ACC, OFC, and insula, which are constantly repeated stress areas in the literature ( Ansell et al., 2012 ; Bolsinger et al., 2018 ; Kasai et al., 2008 ). These GM volumes and PCL-C values were correlated using Pearson correlation in HS to examine the relationship between brain morphology and posttraumatic stress manifestation.

3.1. Interview

In the interviews with the Holocaust survivors, respondents from the focal group typically cited war events (e.g. death of parents, war as a whole, hiding during the war, transport to and stay in a concentration camp, loss of a loved one), as well as topics related to communism (e.g. secret police interrogations, anti-Semitism) and health problems (e.g. ventricular fibrillation, partial disability, accident, illness) as dominant life events. The control group was typically dominated by lifetime losses (e.g. parents, spouse) and health problems (e.g. heart attack, broken arm).

3.1.1. Self-report

All HS participants were asked how they evaluate their current life in relation to the Holocaust. The questions were as follows: 1. Was the Holocaust the worst experience of your life? (84.1% answered yes or rather yes); 2. Did the Holocaust have a lifelong negative influence on your life? (70.5% answered yes or rather yes); 3. Are you satisfied with your personal life (lifelong view)? (79.6% answered yes or rather yes); 4. Are you satisfied with your career (lifelong view)? (86.4% answered yes or rather yes).

3.2. Psychological measures

3.2.1. depression symptoms.

Depression symptoms were screened using the GDS. The prevalence of depression symptoms was significantly higher in HS (p < 0.001): depression symptoms were experienced by 15 HS (34.1%) and by 3 participants of CG (9.7%).

3.2.2. Psychological testing

The results of the psychological testing ( Table 2 ) significantly differed between HS and CG in all questionnaires. PCL-C showed higher rates of lasting symptoms of chronic stress in HS (in 21; 47.7%) than in CG (2; 6.5%). PTGI presents a higher rate of posttraumatic growth in HS, in 31 (70.5%), than in CG, in 11 (35.5%). SOS-10 displays a lower rate of well-being in HS, who could be classified as ‘maladjusted’ (9; 20.5%) than in CG (3; 9.7%). The effect of age was not statistically significant when used as covariate.

The results of the psychological testing in a subgroup of participants who were under the age of 12 in 1945 ( Table 3 ) significantly differed between HS and CG in all questionnaires. PCL-C showed higher rates of lasting symptoms of chronic stress in HS (in 13; 50%) than in CG (1; 4.2%). There is a higher rate of posttraumatic growth in HS, in 18 (69.2%) than in CG, in 9 (37.5%). SOS-10 displays a lower rate of well-being in HS (6; 23.1%) than in CG (1; 4.2%).

Psychological questionnaires: differences between HS under age of 12 in 1945 and age-matched CG.

3.3.1. Neuroimaging group characteristics

The neuroimaging cohort psychological profile resembled the profile of the whole cohort ( Table 4 ). No gender-associated effects were found using a two-sample t -test comparing male and female data.

Psychological questionnaire results of participants participating in the neuroimaging part of this study.

Psychological test results are similar to those in the entire HS group: a greater rate of chronic stress symptoms (significantly in PCL-C) and a lower rate of well-being in HS. Posttraumatic growth is stronger in the HS group but with a borderline p-value of 0.0504.

3.3.2. GMV reduction in holocaust survivors

VBM showed a significant GM volume reduction in HS in regions described in Table 5 and Fig. 1 .

Holocaust survivors vs control group: Structural MRI, clusters with significant GM reduction compared control group. Initial threshold 0.005 uncorrected, 0.05 FWE cluster level significance.

Structural MRI. Holocaust survivors vs control participants thresholded at 0.005; axial slices.

Significant results up to p = 0.05 FWE cluster level. Larger clusters overlap several structures and can be divided into substructures for interpretation purposes. R – right, L – left, R and L – cluster covering bilateral medial cortices. Coordinates indicate the location with the maximum cluster value.

3.3.3. GMV reduction in holocaust survivors under 12 years in 1945

VBM showed a significant GM volume reduction in HS under 12 years in regions described in Table 6 and Fig. 2 .

Holocaust survivors, age under 12 years in 1945. Structural MRI, clusters with significant GM reduction compared to control group. Initial threshold 0.005 uncorrected, 0.05 FWE cluster level significance.

Significant results up to p = 0.05 FWE cluster level. Larger clusters overlap several structures and can be divided into substructures for interpretation purposes. R – right, L – left, R and L – cluster covering bilateral medial cortices. Coordinates indicate the location with the maximum cluster.

Structural MRI. Holocaust survivors younger than 12 years in 1945 vs control participants, thresholded at 0.005; axial slices.

Structural MRI map of Holocaust survivors younger than 12 years in 1945 vs control participants with a liberal initial threshold of p = 0.01 is presented in Supplementary Material. The comparison of the subgroups of HS under 12 years did not yield a qualitatively different pattern from the comparison of the entire groups of participants when lowering the threshold to compensate for the small group sizes.

3.3.4. Correlation between GMV and PTSD symptoms

We found a significant correlation r = 0.395, p-value = 0.034, between grey matter volume in the stress-related network comprising ACC, OFC, and the insula and PCL-C test score.

4. Discussion

Extreme stress in childhood and young adulthood has an irreversible lifelong impact on the brain. More than 70 years after World War II, it is possible to identify lifelong psychological and neurobiological changes in people who survived the Holocaust as compared to a control group without a similar trauma history. There are apparent persistent differences in the frequency of depression symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and posttraumatic growth, in levels of well-being, and in GM volume in the brain.

Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) displayed a significant GM volume reduction in the HS as compared to CG. The areas of reduced grey matter correspond to the map of the impact of stress on the brain structure: insula, anterior cingulate, ventromedial cortex including the subgenual cingulate/orbitofrontal cortex, temporal pole, prefrontal cortex, and angular gyrus. The reduced structures were reported in connection with stress, emotions, affective disorders, autobiographical memory cognition, and behaviour.

The massive reduction of insular volume is of particular note. The insula is functionally linked with other structures that showed volume reduction in HS, in particular with anterior cingulate (ACC), ventromedial prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) ( Perez et al., 2017 ; Phillips et al., 2003 ). The anterior insula may be critical for processing emotions, self-awareness ( Stevens and Jovanovic, 2019 ), and in disorders of mood and anxiety ( Rolls et al., 2018 ).

The ACC is a limbic region associated with a multitude of cognitive and affective processes ( Perez et al., 2017 ) including fear regulation Diekhof et al. (2011) ( Drevets et al., 2008 ); and social behaviour ( Devinsky et al., 1995 ). The medial prefrontal cortex includes the pregenual/subcallosal ACC, subgenual cingulate, and OFC and is associated with the processing of emotions, emotional behaviour, and memory ( Noriuchi et al., 2019 ). The subgenual cingulate (BA 25) is being used as a target for deep brain stimulation therapy for major depression ( Rolls et al., 2018 ).

The temporal pole (TP) is a paralimbic region involved in the regulation of emotion ( Holland et al., 2011 ). A GM reduction in the left medial temporal gyrus and right superior frontal gyrus, possibly associated with autobiographical memory retrieval, was described in PTSD ( Li et al., 2014 ). The angular gyrus is linked to several cognitive functions including self-referential processing ( Stevens and Jovanovic, 2019 ). In a combat veteran PTSD study, the burden of psychological trauma across the lifespan correlated with reduced cortical thickness in limbic/paralimbic areas and in the medial precentral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices ( Lindemer et al., 2013 ).

It can be summarised that the regions with reduced GM volume are associated with functions that could have been influenced by extreme stress. Sustained stress exposure leads to persistent changes in brain circuits regulating behaviour and emotion ( Arnsten et al., 2015 ). This appears even more evident when looking at these regions from the network perspective. The insula is a core region of the salience network that is involved in dynamic prioritising of internal and external stimuli and is implicated in mood/anxiety disorders ( Perez et al., 2017 ). The reduced volume of the insula, ACC, and OFC is considered a sign of increased vulnerability to stress ( Bolsinger et al., 2018 ). Cumulative lifetime adverse events were associated with reduced insular, subgenual ACC, and medial prefrontal volumes ( Ansell et al., 2012 ). The regulation of emotions and of self-awareness are processed in a network composed of the insula and perigenual ACC/ventromedial prefrontal cortex ( Perez et al., 2015 ). The map of reduced GM volume in HS is nearly identical with the set of regions involved in social cognition ( Stevens and Jovanovic, 2019 ).

The affected regions belong to the three core neurocognitive systems crucial for cognitive and affective processing: the salience network, the default mode network, and the central executive network. Deficits in the three networks are associated with a wide range of stress-related psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder ( Menon, 2011 ).

Extreme trauma experienced in childhood has demonstrably lifelong consequences. The reduction of GM was significantly expressed in the young HS, who were under the age of 12 years in 1945. The brains of children are vulnerable despite the fact that children have a limited ability to cognitively process life-threatening situations ( Sigal and Weinfeld, 2001 ). The GM volume reduction in children is probably a consequence of maladaptive experience-dependent neuroplastic changes that are more expressed in a developing brain ( Thomason and Marusak, 2017 ). A lower GM volume in the ACC was found in individuals with prenatal stress ( Marečková et al., 2019 ). Early-life adverse events have been associated with smaller insula, ACC, and OFC ( Dannlowski et al., 2012 ; Rolls et al., 2018 ).

There were no observable changes in the hippocampus and amygdala. The volume reduction of the two structures has been reported in PTSD and affective disorders ( Bremner, 2006 , 2007 ; Teicher et al., 2003 ) but findings are not consistent. Earlier studies also did not find a reduction of the two structures in HS with PTSD ( Cohen et al., 2006 ; Golier et al., 2005 ).

Several hypotheses explain the mechanisms of the alterations in brain structure induced by stress. Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis leads the increased release of corticosteroids which can exert a negative effect on neurogenesis and an increase in apoptosis ( Li et al., 2014 ). However, a decrease in GM volume associated with a reduction in glia, with no loss of neurons, was described in ACC ( Drevets et al., 2008 ). In a stress model in mice, the GM reduction was explained by the loss of dendrites ( Blais et al., 1999 ; Kassem et al., 2013 ).

The GM reduction in our study is very probably the consequence of major psychological trauma. It is not explained by the effects of malnutrition on the brains of the survivors, as the majority of surviving children (with significant GM reduction) were hidden in non-Jewish families and did not experience extreme malnutrition. We found a significant correlation between grey matter volume in structures forming the stress network (insula, ACC, OFC) and PCL-C test score. This means that there is a clear link in our data between the grey matter volume and the psychological manifestations of posttraumatic stress symptoms.

To summarise the MRI part of our study: it shows an enduring lifelong effect of extremely stressful trauma on brain structure. The GM reduced areas correspond to the map of the impact of stress on the brain. The published studies mostly report the impact of stress on the human brain after a limited time period and do not address the question of whether the structural changes are reversible. Our data showing the lifelong consequences more than 70 years after extreme stress indicate that the GM reduction is irreversible. On the other hand, it is evident that the consequences of extreme stress can be compensated on a psychological level.

The psychological testing and HS interviews confirmed the profile corresponding to this structural map; however, the life course and other psychological signs display a more complicated and more positive pattern. After World War II, the psychopathology that characterised Holocaust survivors were described as a combination of chronic anxiety, depression, feelings of guilt, emotional instability, memory disturbances, and personality problems, alongside unresolved mourning and sadness ( Barel et al., 2010 ; Chodoff, 1963 ; Graaf, 1975 ; Helweg-Larsen et al., 1952 ; Prager and Solomon, 1995 ; Sagi-Schwartz et al., 2003 ).

In our study, the HS, when compared to CG, presented a more frequent occurrence of symptoms of chronic stress and depression and lower levels of well-being scores. On the other hand, the HS presented signs of resilience that probably considerably influenced their post-war life ( Heitlinger, 2011 ). They presented higher posttraumatic growth than the CG, and their self-estimation of their lives over the more than 70 years since the Holocaust showed a surprisingly positive pattern. The HS declared that they were satisfied with their lifelong personal life (in 79.6%) and with their professional careers (86.4%). That means that most of HS had productive and successful lives despite the atrocities they endured.

Surviving the Holocaust led to different reactions, including frequent suicides after the war. Those who were available for investigations for several decades after the Holocaust showed successful adaption capacities, similar to our study. The meta-analysis by Barel et al. elucidating the long-term consequences of the Holocaust for survivors suggested that alongside profound sadness there is room for growth ( Barel et al., 2010 ). Several studies have provided support for resilience in survivors of other genocides and persecutions, such as in Bosnia and Cambodia ( Ferren, 1999 ; Rousseau et al., 2003 ).

Holocaust survivors are not a homogeneous group and they vary in their post-trauma adjustment. Our study surpasses other published studies in the time that elapsed since the Holocaust – 70 to 75 years. The HS were up to 95 years old. We can speculate that surviving the Holocaust and living to a very advanced age could reflect a personality profile. It has been shown that Polish Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the British Mandate for Palestine after 1945 lived longer than the Polish Jews who immigrated before 1939, i.e. before the Holocaust ( Sagi-Schwartz et al., 2013 ). The results of a study of Holocaust survivors aged 75 and older revealed almost no differences regarding the sociodemographic and interpersonal variables when compared to a control group. Nevertheless, survivors were found to be more vulnerable ( Landau and Litwin, 2000 ).

Based on our data, we suggest that the combination of depression and chronic stress symptoms with GM reduction in critical areas and posttraumatic growth with good adaptation to life present characteristics of Holocaust survivors. It appears that the strong motivation of Holocaust survivors to rebuild their lives manifested itself primarily in raising families, becoming involved in social activities, and showing achievements on a wide spectrum of social functioning ( Joffe et al., 2003 ; Krell, 1993 ). The neurobiological consequence of extreme stress, i.e. reduction of GM in areas related to stress symptoms, may be compensated by resilience and psychological growth. The lifelong consequences of the Holocaust on survivors may help to understand the adaptational challenges for survivors of more recent wars and catastrophic events.

A brief conclusion of our study is that Holocaust survivors continue to show neurobiological and psychological signs of having been traumatised even more than 70 years after the extreme stress. Extreme stress in childhood and young adulthood has an irreversible lifelong impact on the brain.

5. Limitations

• • The fact that the study was conducting with older participants limited the time available for testing. A selection of brief psychological tests was chosen. The investigation lasted from 3.5 to 5 h. Participants were evaluated for depression symptoms but emotions were not otherwise tested; they were partially revealed in the interview.
• • We did not detect lifetime symptom stresses. The gold standard for posttraumatic stress disorder (CAPS; Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5) was not used, as it is time consuming.
• • The old age of the participants also limited the number of participants with MR data in sufficient quality.
• • The control group was composed of people with no Jewish heritage. In Central Europe, it is not possible to find Jewish participants who were not affected by the Holocaust. Otherwise, the geopolitical background of all participants was similar.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Monika Fňašková: Project administration, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Visualization. Pavel Říha: Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation. Marek Preiss: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation. Petr Bob: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation. Markéta Nečasová: Investigation, Formal analysis. Eva Koriťáková: Formal analysis. Ivan Rektor: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgement.

The authors wish to thank Alena Damborská, Marie Dračková, Veronika Juričková, Alice Prokopová, and Nikola Vaseková for their participation in collecting data; Irena Rektorová and Klára Marečková for valuable advice; and Anne Johnson for grammatical assistance. We thank the MRI team at NÚDZ Klecany (led by Filip Španiel) for recording part of the data and the Jewish Community of Prague for providing financial help for this recording. We thank the Jewish communities in Brno and Prague and the Foundation for Holocaust Victims for their support and help with the recruitment of Holocaust survivors.

We acknowledge the core facility MAFIL of CEITEC MU, supported by the Czech-BioImaging large RI project (LM2015062 funded by MEYS CR), for their support with obtaining scientific data presented in this paper.

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2021.100318 .

Supported by a grant from the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, grant no. AZV NV18-7 04-00559.

Data availability

Appendix a. supplementary data.

The following are the Supplementary data to this article:

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Home > Theses and Dissertations > Undergraduate Honors Theses > 120

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The holocaust's legacy: influencing jewish political identity.

Jordan Eskew , University of San Diego Follow

Date of Award

Spring 5-15-2024

Document Type

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in International Relations

Political Science & International Relations

Dr. Kacie Miura

This thesis addresses the intricate relationship between the historical persecution of the Holocaust and its enduring influence on contemporary Jewish political engagement, a subject of significant contemporary relevance in political and international relations. Despite broad recognition of the Holocaust’s impact, the specific ways in which its memory affects Jewish political attitudes and actions around the world in the modern day have not been sufficiently thoroughly examined. Utilizing qualitative methods, including interviews with 20 individuals—public figures, Holocaust survivors, their descendants, and broader members of the Jewish diaspora— this study focuses on understanding the interplay between historical trauma, community cohesion, and the political responses to security concerns and Israel’s geopolitical challenges. It hypothesizes that the collective memory of the Holocaust instills a pervasive sense of apprehension, influencing political affiliations and behaviors among both survivors’ descendants and the wider community. The findings of this project are intended to offer critical insights into the dynamics of Jewish political identity and decision-making. By highlighting the emotional and psychological dimensions of political engagement, this thesis not only addresses a notable gap in current research but also equips policymakers with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Jewish political responses, ultimately facilitating more informed and empathetic political formulations in a complex global landscape.

Digital USD Citation

Eskew, Jordan, "The Holocaust's Legacy: Influencing Jewish Political Identity" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses . 120. https://digital.sandiego.edu/honors_theses/120

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Since May 28, 2024

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https://doi.org/10.22371/02.2024.006

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Holocaust survivors: three waves of resilience research

Affiliation.

• 1 Gerontology and Social Welfare, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 23092377
• DOI: 10.1080/10911359.2011.566797

Three waves of resilience research have resulted in resilience-enhancing educational and therapeutic interventions. In the first wave of inquiry, researchers explored the traits and environmental characteristics that enabled people to overcome adversity. In the second wave, researchers investigated the processes related to stress and coping. In the third wave, studies examined how people grow and are transformed following adverse events, often leading to self-actualize, client creativity and spirituality. In this article the authors examined data from a study, "Forgiveness, Resiliency, and Survivorship among Holocaust Survivors" funded by the John Templeton Foundation ( Greene, Armour, Hantman, Graham, & Sharabi, 2010 ). About 65% of the survivors scored on the high side for resilience traits. Of the survivors, 78% engaged in processes considered resilient and felt they were transcendent or had engaged in behaviors that help them grow and change over the years since the Holocaust, including leaving a legacy and contributing to the community.

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Jewish Holocaust Survivors Suffering from Trauma and Mental Illness: Approaches in Post War Sydney

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