What can women holocaust survivors tell us about trauma survival and the pathways to resilience?: A listening guide analysis

Women Holocaust survivors have been called “missing figures of history” (Baumel, 1998, p. 55) because of gaps in understanding of their experiences over decades of scholarship. The girls and young women of the Shoah are now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Because the study of trauma within psychology has shifted toward understanding processes that may contribute to recovery and resilience (e.g. Bonanno, 2004; Bonanno & Mancini, 2012; Herman, 1992/1997; Masten, 2007; McFarlane & Yehuda, 1996; Wilson, 2004), it is urgent to listen to their voices. Interviews were conducted with six female members of a Speaker’s Bureau who survived ghettos, concentration camps, death marches, and the resistance movement during the Holocaust. This study is a psychological exploration into how they have lived with trauma and created pathways to resilience over decades. Informed by Relational-Cultural Theory (Jordan & Hartling, 2002) and rooted in the feminist tradition of illuminating experiences of oppressed groups, the study introduces the concepts of agency, communion, and hope as touchstones to understanding human experience and the ways in which trauma may affect their expression. The Listening Guide method of qualitative analysis developed by Gilligan (1982) and colleagues (Brown & Gilligan, 1992) was used as it “draws on voice, resonance, and relationship as ports of entry into the human psyche” (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, and Bertsch, 2003). Findings indicate that these women survivors expressed agency, communion and hope. All six have spoken publicly about the Holocaust and are imbued with purpose to tell the world what they know despite being disillusioned by evidence of indifference to global suffering. They share their negotiations with identity, aging, and spiritual connections while mourning loved ones. The resonance of their voices brings the discussion beyond the constructs of hope, agency and communion, leading the researcher into spaces that convey the power of intimacy to heal. In these spaces, the indescribable pain of the Holocaust communes with the love and values of those who were lost. It is where the women preserve their memories and history while living according to an ethic of caring they believe can heal others as it has sustained them.