ABSTRACT
The lives of every one of us are shaped and developed from a tangled mesh: genetic endowment, family and cultural influence, the chance fate of time and place. For children born to survivors of the Holocaust, the specific and uniquely powerful legacy was nevertheless individually shaped, not only by the previous and subsequent circumstances of their parents’ lives, but by the course of their own life itself. Parents’ desire for their children’s future security frequently led them to place great emphasis on their educational progress. Survivors who married very soon after their release from the camps, or almost immediately after their escape to Britain, sometimes found fellow survivors as partners and clung to them regardless of underlying social, cultural, and temperamental differences. The story of the transmission of the Holocaust experience to the second generation is unfolding.
