Between Silence and Storytelling: Intergenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma and Identity through Family Education

Abstract

This paper investigates how traumatic memory, identity, and prejudice are transmitted from one generation to the next by Holocaust survivors in the process of family education. On one hand, the issue of intergenerational transmission of traumatic experiences has been mainly studied in relation to the psychological and biological processes of inheritance by modern scholars, and on the other hand, by concentrating on the micro-process of education within the framework of the family and focusing on the roles of the emotional mechanism and narrative approaches in the process of transmission, this paper presents an in-depth exploration of survivor stories, memoir narratives, and theoretical frameworks, specifically Hirsch's "Post Memory" and "Redemptive Self" by Adaperson, in order to clarify how and in what way the process of "emotional containment, silence, and fragmentation" stands as a unique and specific form of the "Implicit Educational Mechanism" and how and in what way it significantly impacts the descendants' cognition of identity and historical knowledge in relation to the reconstruction of the identities and the construction of intergenerational education in the framework of both "family narratives and cultural narratives in the form of films and other memorial education activities and related phenomena." This paper presents specific guidance for contemporary "Trauma Education and Prejudice Education."