Cultural Diversity
Impacts of the Holocaust on modern-day Jewish people and its impact on future generations.
The Holocaust refers to the historical period between the year 1941 and 1945, during the Second World War when approximately six million Jews were murdered in Eastern Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators (Feagin & Feagin, 2018). These events led to a genocide of the Jewish people in Germany and other countries where there were Nazi collaborators. The Holocaust has had severe impacts on the Jewish people throughout history, coming to the modern-day.
Among the effects of the Holocaust on the Jewish people is the impact the events had on the mental health of the survivors and their offspring’s (Feagin & Feagin, 2018). Generally, experiencing war and violence first-hand results in irreversible impacts on individuals lives which can spill on to their future generations. According to Dashorst et al. (2019), interactions between parents who survived the Holocaust and their children are usually strained. In addition to that, the mental health of such parents affects the psychological well-being of their offsprings. The mental health is more strained in offsprings who have two parents who survived the Holocaust as compared to those with only one parent. This is as a result of the trickle-down effect (Dashorst et al., 2019). Typically, if the parent is experiencing mental health problems due to stressful situations or experiences, this has a higher probability of trickling down to their children. Therefore, the issues of the parents end up causing strains in the life of their children. The mental impact of the Holocaust is also associated with posing a significant danger to the mental health of future generations. Research has found that children from the survivors of the Holocaust are more vulnerable to stress, especially when faced with situations that pose a significant danger to their well-being. This is associated with the imbalance of the cortisol levels in the offspring of the survivors.
Another impact on modern-day Jewish people that is associated with the Holocaust is the impact on their identity. The Holocaust mainly affected two aspects of identity; the first is the personal identity and the other the social identity. The personal identity, the most basic form of identification, was impacted by the Holocaust in several ways (Katarzyna, 2018). The happenings of the Holocaust are traumatizing for the survivors. Trauma has a significant effect on the self-structure, which could ultimately lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This poses a substantial impact on personal identity; for instance, the survivors describe how they had to form new intrinsic qualities that define themselves in the post Holocaust period. Many are times when these survivors describe their personality as having been divided differently into the pre and post Holocaustic periods (Katarzyna, 2018). This shift in personal identity affected not only the personality aspect but also the naming system among the Jewish people. Such effects have gone on to influence the identity of future generations.
The other aspect of identity, social identity, defined as the feeling of belonging to specific social groups, was also significantly affected by the Holocaust. To ensure their survival, many Jewish children were hidden then they were placed in new families, mostly non-Jewish families, where they were guaranteed of having a future. Since the majority of them were still very young during the Holocaust period, they grew up knowing that they belonged to those families. Discovery of their identity during adulthood affects not only their identity but also their social identity in relation to nationality, religion and cultures. This is a significant impact of a majority of present-day Jews who were too young during the Holocaustic period to discern what was happening (Feagin & Feagin, 2018). Such may go on to affect their future generations who may find themselves being unable to fit in any social group since they are unaware of their social origins. In addition to that, the Holocaust has had significant impacts on the way the Jewish society is viewed by other communities worldwide.
What are the impacts of the push for Holocaust-denial on society?
As human beings, we tend to refute aspects of ourselves that typically tarnish our self-presentation or which fall against our present desires. Denial has expanded to include other elements of the society that are sensitive to individual members of the community, who would rather discredit them. This is the current situation with the Holocaust stories. The Holocaust deniers believe that the Holocaust stories are just made up by the Jewish people to push for their agendas. Additionally, they argue that the death of the Jews during the second world war was not orchestrated. Instead, they died because of the indiscriminate hardships experienced during that period. Some even go to the extent of denying the existence of the gas chambers, arguing that these were just chambers for keeping war prisoners (Hobbs, 2017).
These beliefs held by the deniers of the Holocaust has led to several impacts in the present society. Of most concern is the development of long-standing antisemitic stereotypes. This has seen nations coming up with laws that criminalize any conversations that revolve around the Holocaust. An example is a law made in the country of Poland that made it a criminal offence to mention Poland in complicity with the crimes of the Holocaust (Hobbs, 2017). In addition to that, specific individuals like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been under fire for advocating for Holocaust-denying speeches to be allowed on Facebook. All these instances show the complexity surrounding the sensitive topic of Holocaust denial and how it has affected the current society.
References
Dashorst, P., Mooren, T. M., Kleber, R. J., de Jong, P. J., & Huntjens, R. J. (2019). Intergenerational consequences of the Holocaust on offspring mental health: a systematic review of associated factors and mechanisms. European journal of psychotraumatology, 10(1), 1654065.
Feagin, J., R., & Feagin, C. B. (2012). Racial and Ethnic Relations, Census 9TH Edition. Pearson. ISBN: 0-205-02499-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-205-02499-5
Hobbs, M. (2017). ‘The men who rewrite history’: Holocaust denial and the British far-right from 1967 1. In Tomorrow Belongs to Us (pp. 9-26). Routledge.
Katarzyna, P. (2018). Broken Identity. The Impact of the Holocaust on Identity in Romanian and Polish Jews. Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. Isr J Psychiatry Relate Sci Vol 45 No.4:239–246.