The Impact of World War II on Holocaust survivors and Their Mental Health

The Impact of World War II on Holocaust Survivors and their Mental Health
Name
Course
Institution
Due Date
The Impact of World War II on Holocaust Survivors and their Mental Health
The world is currently witnessing political instabilities across different regions that have escalated into endless civil wars or armed conflicts with devastating effects on all the parties involved in the wars. The multi-sided civil war in Syria, for instance, threatens spillage to other countries around the world including its neighboring nations that support the different warring factions. The Western countries are cautious in their approach or involvement in the wars and armed conflicts witnessed around the world in countries such as Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Instead, the perceived powerful or influential countries function to contain the warring events and provide amicable solutions towards bringing to an end the highly devastating events. That was, however, not the case in one of the most catastrophic warring events recorded in human history that occurred towards the mid 20th century whose involvement of countries from all the continents of the world coined its famous name; World War II. The Second World War, as it is also known, goes down in the world’s history as one of the most devastating warring events whose destruction went beyond loss of lives to impart untold mental and psychological suffering among both the active participants and the civilians. However, it was the racial cleansing of the Jews by Nazi Germany across the European region that stood out as the most atrocious element of the Second World War. The Holocaust, as it came to be known, accounts for some of the outrageous warring events ever witnessed in the world and whose repercussions are still felt by the survivors of the same seven decades later. The psychological and mental effects of the ordeal faced or rather witnessed by survivors of the Holocaust further go beyond those who were directly exposed to the atrocities to include their subsequent generations. An evaluation of the impact of World War II creates a comprehensive understanding of its effects on the survivors of the holocaust through the lens of mental health.
The Holocaust
World War II is characteristic of key events that took place across the duration of the war from its beginning in 1939 to the year 1945. Among the historical events include the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States and the subsequent ferocious attacks and bombing of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought the world to a standstill. The bombing of Japan by the United States led to the death of over 220,000 people with more fatalities recorded on both sides from the armed conflict preceding the use of the atomic bombs on the former. It is, however, without any form of bias or belittling of the devastating effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing that one finds the event as far much short of the catastrophic and traumatizing experience of the Holocaust. The Holocaust makes for one of the most horrific approaches to war ever designed by human beings that thrived on the Nazi’s ability to dehumanize and exterminate the Jews across the European region. The horrendous events of the systematic elimination of the Jews across the social, political, and economic divides with the European community by the Nazi Germans led to the death of over six million Jews and displacements in the hundreds of thousands of the Jewish people. Among the manifestations of the Holocaust included the rounding up of Jewish individuals across the gender and age divides and inhumane transportation of the victims to various concentration camps in Germany and other European countries such as Poland and Austria. As seen from the testimony of Anna Heilman, humanity had lost respect of life. People fainted and others died but no one cared. The psychological baggage the bereaved were left with was unbearable as Anna indicates that some went mad. These moments must represent the lowest humanity has ever sunk.[Weinberg, G. L. World War II: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, 2014.] [Weinberg, G. L. World War II: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, 2014] [Barel, et. al. "Surviving the Holocaust:A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Sequelae of a Genocide." Psychological Bulletin, 2010: 677-69] [Associated Press. "Most Holocaust survivors battle depression." NBCNews. January 28, 2010. /id/35082451/ns/health-mental_health/t/most-holocaust-survivors-battle-depression/#.XrN0B_8zZdg (accessed May 6, 2020).] [Stiftung niendersachsische Gedenkstatten (ed.), Bergen-Belsen (Gottingen, 2009), pp. 322-3, 373.]
Fig 1
The concentration camps were characteristic of dehumanizing experiences such as extremely hard labor, lack of food or starvation, diseases, indiscriminate torture, and killing of individuals and their loved ones. Individuals who managed to escape capture by the Nazis ended up living in hiding under false identities across Europe amidst a constant threat of being discovered. In essence, the Jews were subjected to dehumanizing or depersonalizing experiences as well as absolute disregard for human life that functioned to create traumatizing effects to those exposed to the atrocities and their subsequent generations. The traumatizing ordeals faced by the survivors of the Holocaust thus provide an excellent basis for evaluating the effect of World War II on their mental and psychological wellness. The evaluation may further be approached from the perspective of the individuals who were directly exposed to the Holocaust experience and those that survived the experience. Holocaust survivors suffered adverse effects across the psychological, maladaptive, and normative domains due to the traumatic experiences at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. The outlined domains thus provide an equally effective framework for creating an understanding of the negative mental impacts of the horrific experiences of the Holocaust on the survivors.[Withuis, J., & Mooij, A. The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries. Amsterdam University Press, 2010.] [Barel, et. al. "Surviving the Holocaust:A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Sequelae of a Genocide." Psychological Bulletin, 2010: 677-69]
Psychological Effects of the Holocaust on Survivors
A majority of the psychiatrists who attended to the Holocaust survivors during the mid-20th century found the latter to have dysfunctional psychological abilities. Characteristic features or symptoms for the psychological dysfunction among the survivors included lack of sleep, anxieties, depression, indecision, bitterness, and resentment. Other indicators of their psychological or mental dysfunction included irrational fears, emotional dependence, or the inability to lead autonomous lives, apathy, low self-esteem, and difficulties in concentration. The outlined psychological effects manifest in both the maladaptive and normative domains of the lives of the Holocaust survivors. ...