Did your grandparents survive the Holocaust?
Were they refugees from Nazi Europe?
How does being a third generation descendant affect your life?
What role do your
family’s
experiences during the Holocaust have in your life?
What is transmitted across generations?
How does the Holocaust weave itself into your identity and world-view?
These workshops were designed to create a safe and effective forum to explore identity and intergenerational effects of the Holocaust, involving discussion, creative arts modalities (psychodrama, art, music and movement), journal writing and video diary entries.
The workshops took place over three consecutive Sundays: 2nd, 9th and 16th December 2007, from 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.
The venue was the Wiener Library, 4 Devonshire St, London W1W 5BH.
Cost: The program was fully subsidized by the Wiener Library. Lunch was provided and reasonable travel expenses were reimbursed.
Expectation: Openness and willingness. Participants were invited to contribute to a DVD documentary. However, full privacy and anonymity was respected when individuals did not wish to take part in this.
The outcomes of this workshop were presented at Limmud England in December 2007.
For more information contact:
3GH@wienerlibrary.co.uk or telephone 07851 754 824.
For more information about 3GH see our website
www.3gh.com.au
3GH London follows the success of 3GH Melbourne in which ten third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum over six weeks for three hours a week. A raw footage documentary of this process entitled “Somewhere Inside of Us” was produced and presented at Yad Vashem at the “Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations” conference in June of 2006. 3GH New York is scheduled for early 2008. The vision is to create a global network of people whose concerns include exploration and action; a “gathering in” in response to the splintering impact of the events of the Holocaust.
3GH is an acronym for third generation Holocaust descendants. The “third” generation includes both grandchildren of survivors and non-direct descendants who come to vicariously identify with being the third generation through culture, community and education. Themes include Jewish identity, desensitisation, carrying and redefining ‘the legacy’, responses to the mantras “never again” and “remember”, persecution – real or imagined, persecution complex, responses to anti-Semitism, family dynamics, relationship with grandparents and parents, intergenerational transmission of trauma, responsibility for social action; and consideration of ‘world view’ in a post Holocaust era. The aims of the workshop are for exploration and action. Genocide is still a reality and with this in mind, pathways to social action become an imperative.
My decision to explore my family’s Holocaust trauma came a few years after studying Australian Aboriginal studies at university. Lecturers were survivors of the stolen generation and I sat at the front of the class every lesson, transfixed; strongly, deeply and overly immersed in their stories; identification buzzing in my body. Soon after came the realisation that I hadn’t yet explored my own cultural narrative. Thus began a journey, opening the door to a deep analysis of my Jewish identity, which included a psychological inquiry – personal and academic - into my Holocaust identity/trauma.
My thesis was entitled “A Study of Third Generation Holocaust Descendants”. I interviewed 20 third generation descendants about their identities. With the Holocaust as the entry point, where and how did their Jewish, cultural and personal identity play out? How were their relationships with their grandparents and parents? How did they perceive their own sense of Holocaust trauma/identity? The door was opening – wider and wider and the house was getting bigger and bigger – more rooms, more resonance, more angles, more conversations. Sometimes this exploration felt too big to bear but it didn’t feel as though I had a choice. I was being driven toward this inquiry.
My grandparents never imposed their grief onto us. They rarely shared stories about their experiences of running, hiding, being in camps; the fact that their entire families were destroyed; their murdered parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, friends; the loss of their homes, towns, their life before. They, like many survivors appeared to “move on” quickly, creating new families, integrating into new cultures, countries and work life.
Despite their silence, I inherited a “knowing” and I inherited a sensibility. This sensibility I cannot name so easily. It comes in the form of feeling awakened when I notice that I am sadly and strangely “at home in grief” whilst engaging in post-Holocaust memory. I call this diving into the post-Holocaust pool of memory. It manifests in the close grandmother/granddaughter connection, spending 5 years writing my thesis, conceiving the 3GH project, working with Holocaust survivors. It is awakened when I watch Holocaust films, spend time in Holocaust museums and sometimes when I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
I have come to feel that my inheritance – the intergenerational transmission of trauma I recognise and own - is a natural and inevitable response to a trauma so large in magnitude, it has taken on its own life force. It makes sense that three generations on, the responsibility to engage and process this collective and communal trauma is part of my landscape.