The Aftermath: Living with the Holocaust [Hardcover]

Aaron Hass (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521474299 | ISBN-13: 978-0521474290 | Publication Date: February 24, 1995 | Edition: First Edition

The Aftermath offers a perspective of how one who has lived with terror for years is able to avoid paralysis and move forward. The Aftermath offers the most comprehensive examination of the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors ever undertaken and covers the widest range of topics, including: survivor guilt, the absence of mourning, the psychological characteristics of survivor families, a survivor's view of God, survivors' feelings about Germans as well as their own countrymen of origin, and the survivor's ongoing sense of vulnerability.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this beautifully written book, Aaron Hass explores human responses to the trauma of the Holocaust from a psychosocial and mental health perspective....The book succeeds in offering a balanced view of survivors as individuals who have been able to move forward following adversity, but at great psychic cost." Jewish Book World

Book Description

This study is the most comprehensive examination undertaken of the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors. Covering a broad range of topics, it offers a perspective of how one who has lived with terror for years is able to avoid paralysis and move forward.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 233 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (February 24, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521474299
• ISBN-13: 978-0521474290
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #480,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What the world learned, August 4, 2001

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Aftermath (Paperback)

In a chapter named Vulnerabilities, Aaron Hass quotes an unnamed Holocaust survivor who asks, "What did the world learn from the Holocaust? What the world learned from the Holocaust is that you can kill six million Jews and no one will care."

This comment like many others in this superb book reverberates to the bone.

Hass answers a need not only of the dwindling community of survivors, but of those who, while neither survivors nor children of survivors, are nevertheless heirs to horrific pain--those Jewish children born in the shadow of the Holocaust and dressed by its memories, engulfed by a pervasive sense of loss and the need to reaffirm Jewish life.

"Survivors are people, not a phenomenon," Hass writes. Their feelings endure. Given my own feelings, I suspect that these are echoed by the feelings of the Jewish people, which is only now, after a generation, beginning to comprehend the enormity of what occurred.

"To refer to the Holocaust as 'monstrous, inhuman event' is to miss the point," Hass concludes. "The Holocaust was imposed by men and women on other human beings. 'It was a time when there were people, not only the Germans, but the others too, what wanted to kill all the Jewish people."

Unfortunately, such sentiments are still published broadly in parts of the world, without note, much less consequence. The press considers them just as unimportant now as it did in the 1930s.

Hass writes, "And so most Holocaust survivors believe that it could happen again." I sadly confess, so do I. Alyssa A. Lappen

5.0 out of 5 stars Novel Approach, September 14, 2010

By 

Jeffrey Kandel (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Aftermath (Paperback)

Dr. Haas' book is an excellent blend of letting the survivors speak for themselves while molding those comments into cohesive, sometimes novel psychological insights into the difficulties they face and the issues they deal with every day. I highly recommend it.