ABSTRACT
In the extreme condition of adolescents without parents or parent-substitutes, how does adolescent development proceed? Does it evolve as in the movie Lord of the Flies? Is there a developmental risk from this? Does some defense mechanism hypertrophy and protect? What happens to development when the adolescent is simultaneously in a very vulnerable and life-threatening situation for an extended period of time? When do such extreme conditions occur? The answer to that last question is in an ambience of genocide. In that case, is there anything that helps survival or development? Does some helpful person, even if ever-so-casual a contact, have an ameliorating influence? This chapter considers these questions by focusing on the Holocaust with its pervasive atmosphere of genocide since it is the best documented one to date.
