Holocaust Narratives and Their Impact on Adult Children of Survivors

This chapter ¹ discusses the process the Transcending Trauma Project used to ask Holocaust survivors for their life histories. The impact of key narratives told by survivors and heard by their children and grandchildren is explored with a focus on development, socialization, and identity formation. We are particularly interested in how people adapt in the aftermath of trauma and how they construct and communicate memory and meaning as individuals and within their communities. We elicit testimonies that are fluid rather than fixed, open to the expression of deeper personal meaning and self-exploration. As survivors’ narratives are heard, particularly within the family, their stories about traumatic events teach the listeners more than just how to cope with trauma, but more broadly how to be in the world. The listener, in turn, selects, remembers, and internalizes (albeit not consciously) the stories that later may translate into life lessons.