Holocaust interview LH

10:22PM Apr 30, 2020

Speakers:

Keywords:

concentration camp

germany

affected

united states

teenager

dad

parts

met

emigrate

grew

warzone

traumatic experience

lived

german

psychiatric

war

europe

mental health

guilt

ptsd

Okay. Hi everyone, it's Lizzie, and today I'm going to be interviewing my dad. So, dad. Obviously, Europe was a terrible place to be during the Holocaust. I was wondering if you knew anyone who lived in Europe during the time or escaped a concentration camp, and if so, if you'd be willing to share part of their story.

Hello everyone. I did not. I've never met anyone who escaped, a concentration camp, but I did meet a man who grew up, was a teenager during the war, and he grew up in Germany, and he emigrated to the United States after the war was over, he was lucky enough to survive and be able to emigrate to the United States. And I met him as a teenager I met him through my dad he was a doctor at the same hospital as my father so I met him and I went to his house a few times. I never really, I've never really spoke to him that much about his experience but I learned through my dad who did speak to him about his experiences during the war and in coming to the United States and how it affected him.

Thank you. Um. Did your dad ever tell you if these traumatic experiences, helped shape him into the person he is today.

Well, I believe they did, because the man became when he came to the United States, he became a psychiatrist, and he chose to sort of help people, mentally, their mental health. And I have to believe that going through sort of that traumatic experience of living in a warzone as a teenager as a young man, and following the medical field, specifically file, following the psychiatric field. I have to believe that that impacted him and change the course of his life.

Thank you. Um, so obviously there's some factor of PTSD. Um, but did you observe any parts of his everyday life in the United States now being harder for him because of the trauma he was forced to face.

Well, he has since passed away. Okay. But I remember being in his house. And I remember seeing in the house. A lot of parts of Germany, that like relics of Germany that aren't associated with Nazi ism, but were associated with things that you don't see about Germany anymore sort of like a lost culture that you could see, it's sort of, he, he longed for a Germany that was not the one of his teenage years, and it obviously affected him in his career choice and his vocational, you know, helping people through mental health and I would imagine most German people who grew up during that timeframe, have a level of guilt that they feel about how the definitely the how the Jewish people were treated and how the concentration camps. And I think many German people even if they weren't involved when they were children. At the time, must feel sort of a cultural guilt for that entire period of time, and I think it had to affect them in different ways.

Okay. Well that's all the questions that I have, but thank you for taking the time to answer some of these questions.

I enjoyed it.