Abstract
People who went through the horrors of the Holocaust struggle with their memories in different ways. Many experience overwhelming and intrusive recollections accompanied by strong emotions, even more so fifty years after the end of the war than earlier. Others have tried to silence their memories by attempts to keep the memories away or by dissociating themselves from the memories. Not much has been written about this other side of the coping process, that is, to what extent do survivors of the Holocaust succeed to distance themselves from their experiences. Forgetting in the form of repression, denial, and dissociation is a common phenomenon in the aftermath of other traumatic instances (Kleber & Brom, 1992), and amnesia has also been demonstrated after combat experiences (Karon & Widener, 1997; Van der Hart et al., 1999).
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van der Hart, O., Brom, D. (2000). When the Victim Forgets. In: Shalev, A.Y., Yehuda, R., McFarlane, A.C. (eds) International Handbook of Human Response to Trauma. Springer Series on Stress and Coping. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4177-6_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4177-6_17
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