ABSTRACT
In order to make further comments on the mourning process in Holocaust survivors, I will use my mother’s, my father-in law’s, and my personal experiences as “windows” into the subjective experience of mourning following multiple and traumatic losses. In my two earlier publications on the subject (Ornstein, 2010 , 2016), I focused on the difference between mourning as this occurs in response to the death of a single individual under ordinary, civilized conditions, and mourning as this would have to be conceptualised when mourning is delayed following the loss of one’s whole family and community under traumatic conditions. In these publications, I described creativity as a transformative agent. Memorials, poems, music, memoirs, paintings, and sculptures that deal with the subject of mourning not only bring back the past but when read and/or viewed, the past is actively mourned. Survivors of communal disasters visit these sites and seek out these texts because of their power to elicit the dreaded but also deeply desired pain of grief. Much as it is dreaded, experiencing grief is also desired because it is only then that the numbness that isolates the bereaved from his/her surroundings can be overcome.
