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Survivors Guilt Essay

1800 Words8 Pages

Survivor 's Guilt Imagine surviving the Holocaust while millions of other people have perished. Dying people from left to right. You honestly wanted to help them, however you could not.Would you feel the guilt that you were alive while the person next to you did not? Even if you had the chance, would you even have saved them? Tons of the survivors wanted to forget this historical event, although they could not. While many consider the Holocaust in the past, for the survivors, the horror will never be completely over. Background Countless of the survivors did not think that they were going to form it through the Holocaust. Survivors thought that the process was going to be expedited and wanted it to done with. The ones that did make it through wondered why did they have made it but not the person next to them. Was this forming guilt? What is guilt? “Guilt is a …show more content…

“I hadn’t understood how powerful this guilt laced its fingers through my family,” (They’re Coming). The guilt was so atrocious that even family members from later generations were being affected by the callous memories of the Holocaust. “The horrific events that occurred in the Holocaust have created a unique situation where PTSD and symptoms associated with the disorder are felt not only by survivors but also by following generations of both survivors’ and perpetrators’ children,” (Douillard). “It has been acknowledged that many survivors of severely traumatic events experience some form of guilt, and thus guilt has been recognized as an associated symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder,” (Ayalon). “They felt that the war had changed them and they had lost their much needed spark to life,” (Psychological Effects). Guilt is definitely a disorder. It needs to be treated. This guilt is not the type where someone feels awful as someone falls off the bike and gets over with it within an hour or two. This guilt is the type where the survivors were going to live with it for years and they will have to

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