Holding on to Humanity: The Message of Holocaust Survivors [Hardcover]

Israel W. Charny (Editor), Robert J. Lifton (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1992

The effects of the Holocaust on those who survived it are immeasurable. How can one experience the trauma of the concentration camps - being reduced to a helpless witness of the brutality of torture, medical experiments, and execution of those around you - how can one survive this and remain the same? In many ways, the Holocaust has drastically effected those who survived, and in "Holding on to Humanity" Shamai Davidson explores the complex results of this dehumanizing experience. As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in Israel, Davidson spent 30 years working with this special group, trying to understand the nature of their experience. Evoking from survivors their most silenced stories, Davidson concentrated on giving them voice and recorded memory. Davidson worked on this book for many years - since 1972 it was a dream of his to write an authoritative work on the life experiences of the Holocaust survivors and their families - but unfortunately Davidson died in 1985 at the age of 59. This book is the result of extensive effort by Israel W.Charny to complete the project at the request of Davidson's widow, Jenny Davidson.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this intensely fascinating book, Davidson succeeds in conveying a systematic understanding of trauma and survival as a whole, while emphasizing individual difference."

-Jerusalem Post, --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Israel W. Charny is Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem; and Associate Professor of Psychology, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Marital Love and Hate, Existential/Dialectical Marital Therapy: Breaking the Secret Code of Marriage; and the coauthor (with Chanan Rapaport) of How Can We Commit the Unthinkable?: Genocide, the Human Cancer. He is also the editor (with Shamai Davidson) of The Book of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide: Book One: The Conference Program and Crisis; Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide [Selected Presentations at the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide]; and Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: New York University Press (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814714811
• ISBN-13: 978-0814714812
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,830,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Post-traumatic stress disorder among aging holocaust survivors, and its effect on the second generation, August 26, 2009

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M. Mulberg - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Holding on to Humanity--The Message of Holocaust Survivors: The Shamai Davidson Papers (Paperback)

Shamai Davidson, who died unfortunately at too young an age, was one of the premier experts on PTSD in holocaust survivors, and its intergenerational effect on their children. This Israeli analyst, who is not well known in the United States, combined a brilliant intellect with a tremendous empathic response to survivors, him being as it were, an unaffected offspring raised by a family in Scotland who lost many relatives in the Shoah. To say that Shammai(Sammy) was unaffected is not totally correct. He himself suffered guilt feelings as a child for being allowed to "survive" in the benign safety of Scotland, even as he knew his relatives perished to the East. Thus he suffered second-generation effects of the Holocaust (intrusive thoughts etc), even though his parents were not survivors. This childhood steered him into his chosen field. Thus the book is a testimony to his analytic wisdom in dealing with this patient population, realizing, as William Niederland M.D. did, that the "survivor syndrome" is a distinct nosological entity, transmissible to the next generation. Sammy's brilliance was that, even accepting this fact, he was still able to hold on to his humanity and the dignity of those who survived massive psychic trauma.

Max Mulberg, Ph.D.