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This article is based on a series of interviews with 73 individuals who participated in the 1948 war. Though the war had many physical as well as emotional casualties, surprisingly a relatively small portion of individuals were willing to admit the occurrence of combat stress reactions. This finding is quite puzzling in the face of the drastic course of the war. Hence, it is speculated that denial and suppressive processes underlie the interviewees' declarations. Moreover, it is assumed that this denial process is part of the construction of a monolithic social identity. The origins of this process and its implications for Israeli social identity are discussed.

While Holocaust related activities and educational programs around the world are growing in number, published reports on their impact are scarce, especially on the university level. The free responses of 94 Jewish‐Israeli university students who took the course “Psychology of the Holocaust” yielded eight themes. The results reflect a change of emphasis and movement from a mainly particularistic interpretation of the Holocaust to a more universalistic understanding of the Holocaust. This movement is explained by the occurrence of two reflective processes: situational and universal reflexivity of genocide and reflexivity regarding the personal and collective impact of genocide.

The current article presents an analysis of the life stories of three generations of women within a family headed by a Holocaust survivor. Its uniqueness lies in its double analysis of the stories told by these women, with an interval of 12 years between telling. The first series of interviews were conducted in the early 1990s within the framework of a pioneering study in which, for the first time, three generations in each of 20 families were interviewed and their narratives analyzed. The current analyses are based on the perspective that, through life narratives, it is possible to view the transformations of relationships over time and that these transformations in relationships are central to personal development. We will examine the relationships of the women in these three generations, both with significant others and with each other. We will trace processes of development and changes in these relationships over the 12 years. Finally, we will discuss the social and methodological implications of our study.

This study analyzes a dialogue process aimed at building relationships between Jews and Palestinians in Israel using an innovative research approach of following the story of the encounter. It attempts to explore whether such dialogue groups are able, in practice, to actually get away from the unbalanced political–structural conditions of the conflict between them. Usually we try to learn about such processes through successful ‘good enough’ encounters. This study takes the opposite position of looking at what we can learn from an unsuccessful encounter: A ‘bad enough’ one. Analysis of the dynamics that evolved in this dialogue shows the different tactics that were used by two Jewish-Israeli students to control the dialogue and emphasize themes of ‘togetherness’, ‘we want quiet’ and ‘we are all human beings’. We follow the futile attempts made by both other Jewish and Palestinian participants to counter these control attempts and to center the discussion on national identity and conflict. Finally, we discuss ways in which such a dialogue process could have been improved and could have served as a learning experience for its participants.

The storytelling method can be used to work through intractable conflicts. Working-through enables people who have suffered traumatic social experiences to learn to live with these painful events while developing an ability to listen to the pain of the “other.” The storytelling approach focuses on the way personal storytelling facilitates the working-through processes in intractable conflicts. The storytelling approach was used in To Reflect and Trust (TRT), a dialogue group that began in 1992 and involved descendants of Nazi perpetrators and Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors. The storytelling method was applied to a year-long Jewish-Palestinian student workshop held at Ben Gurion University in 2000–2001.

This article describes a method of data collection and analysis that was developed for the tracing of processes of identity construction and perception of others among young Jewish adults – citizens of Israel. In order to learn how young adults perceive different ‘others’ and construct their sense of collective identity, a semi-structured interview was developed that was comprised of five moral dilemmas concerning internal as well as external others that contribute to the construction of Jewish-Israeli identity. This article traces the process of instrument development and presents the types of analyses that were used in interpretation of the dilemmas. We then demonstrate the analyses by presenting examples from four interviews with Jewish-Israelis. Based on the results of our study, ideas for future research and utilization of the research method are offered.

This article examines the ways in which one's perception of the other contributes to processes involved in the construction of collective identity. This study presents analyses and comparisons of semi-structured interviews using a dilemma concerning ownership of a house that was undertaken with 20 Jewish and Palestinian university students, citizens of Israel, who participated in a 1-year seminar that dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Analyses of the entire sample showed that, during the year, all of the participants enhanced their self-awareness of the complexity of the conflict. Each group emphasized the processes that reflect the role of the conflict in the construction of its collective identity. The Palestinians appeared to be in the process of constructing their identity and the Jews in the process of deconstructing theirs while trying to cope with their need for security during the on-going conflict. In-depth analyses of interviews with 2 women students highlighted the processes of ident...

This article describes how telling the story of one's personal experiences in a small group comprised of members from opposing sides of intractable conflicts can help work through some of the ongoing intergenerational effects of violence. The concept of "working through," which underlies the rationale for using this method, is reviewed. This story-telling approach was developed by the members of TRT (To Reflect and Trust). It was initially composed of German descendants of Nazi perpetrators and Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors. The original members met annually for 4 to 6 days at a time, and in recent years have been joined by others actively working to reduce tensions in the current conflict areas of Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Palestine-Israel. The guidelines for dialogue work in such groups which have evolved from the TRT encounters are presented and discussed, with examples of how they have been adapted for use in the Northern Ireland and Palestinian-Israeli contexts.

This article examines psychosocial aspects of family/parent-child relationships during the Holocaust by focusing on the emotional memories of such relationships. Global and thematic analyses were undertaken on 93 life story interviews and testimonies with Holocaust survivors. Results showed that survivors who lived through most of the war with parents/family and those who had lived approximately an equal time with loved ones and without them were able to recall and narrate more emotional memories, both positive and negative, than people who had experienced the traumatic period mostly on their own. However, going through the war with family did not guarantee the narration of emotional memories; close to half of these victims could not recall/narrate such memories. In general, when the survivor recalled relative emotional security, she or he felt safe, even when physical danger was imminent. However, this feeling did not always continue when the physical situation worsened or when the survivor was separated...

This paper presents an analysis of the group process in encounters between Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens by using a typology for discourse classification. The typology presented here is a sensitive research tool that was developed in the absence of existing instruments, which analyze the developmental process of discourse in groups. It is an instrument that can help in conceptualizing and analyzing the process occurring in face-to-face encounters between representatives of groups in conflict. Inter-group encounters are seen as a developmental process. In this paper, development is defined as changes in the quality of discourse, progressing on a scale from the lowest point—“ethnocentric talk”, to the highest point—“dialogic moment”. Progress is transition from discourse based on stereotypes, not listening to the other, and perceiving the other as an object for persuasion to dialogue characterized by equality, listening, trying to understand reality from the other's point of view, and a joint effort in construction of meaning. The study is based on the assumption that change in the quality of discourse is a sign of a cognitive and affective change in the way one perceives the “other”, the “self” and “truth”, which enables the parties to engage in dialogue and achieve understanding. The categories, which distinguish among types of discourse, grew out of text analysis based on the Hermeneutic Case Reconstruction method (The narrative study of lives. Sage 1(1) (1993) 59). The article demonstrates the use of this typology in analyzing examples from the discourse, which took place over the course of 1 yr at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. It is important to note that since the emphasis is on content and its meanings, this kind of analysis poses the question of subjectivity of the researcher's perspective. As Jewish Israeli researchers, we were aware of possible bias in our interpretations due to being more sensitive to one group's point of view. In order to allow for multiple perspectives, the raw data was presented to two Palestinian Israeli researchers. The Palestinian researchers provided additional viewpoints and interpretations that were integrated in the analysis of the group discourse.

The TRT (To Reflect and Trust) approach of bringing together descendants of Holocaust survivors and descendants of Nazi perpetrators relies on group dialogues in which participants share their personal life stories, thereby enabling them to reflect on their personal and collective histories as victims and victimizers. This process was initiated and led by the second author—an Israeli psychologist and a specialist in group processes—in the context of the socially and historically contextualized approach to group interventions that he has developed. The present study describes a new phase of the TRT group that brought together, in the framework of a workshop, professionals from South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Israel and the Palestinian Authority—all of whom were working with victims and victimizers in current conflicts. Our question was whether the TRT process, using methods of storytelling to address a past catastrophe of human making, could help the professionals who try to help other people move out of current conflicts into peace-building. We found that the TRT storytelling approach facilitates the working through of current ethnic conflicts. Participants' responses to the workshop indicated the importance of the storytelling process and of the emotional support provided by the TRT group members. We focus here on the special significance of the group process between Germans, Jews, and Palestinians, which emerged as highly significant for the Jewish participants in their efforts to reconcile being both victims and victimizers (within two separate historical contexts: German/Jewish and Israeli/Palestinian).

A theoretical framework concerning cultural patterns labeled individualism and collectivism is probed with regard to two conflicted societies, Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab societies. The following three methods were used to examine collectivism/individualism constructs among 1,190 Palestinian and 1,144 Israeli high school students: items that tap values, interest in different domains of history, and attitudes toward conflict resolution. Both groups were found to be more collectivistic than individualistic oriented. However, as predicted, the Palestinians scored higher than the Israeli students on items emphasizing in-group collectivist orientation (my nationality, my country, etc.). The differences between the two groups tended to reflect some subdistinctions such as different elements of individualism and collectivism. Moreover, they reflected the historical context and contemporary influences, such as the stage where each society is at in the nation-making process.

Unlike certain Israeli historians or sociologists who have developed a critical "post-Zionist" approach, Israeli psychologists display few signs of this critical trend. This is especially disquieting in light of the latest back and forth movement between warfare and the peace process-a movement that created many new social and individual dilemmas that would benefit from an open debate within social and clinical psychology. This paper tries to account for this deficiency by looking at its possible historical, political, and cultural roots. The historical aspects relate to the influence of European andAmerican psychological traditions. Two political aspects are presented: (1) Israeli psychologists, through their involvement in the military and their acceptance of the Zionist claim for security, tend to belong to the political mainstream (Gergen, 1973, 1989); and (2) a hyper-political atmosphere scared Israeli psychologists into neutrality and objectivism. This provided a convenient rationale for apoliticism, especially when Israeli political polarization in the 1980s and 1990s was perceived as threatening psychologists' professional authority. Culturally, the psychologists, like the European social strata from which most of them originated, tended to adopt the American tradition of individualism as a reaction to the strong collectivist trend that dominated Israeli society during its early years. This may account for their weak and delayed social response of humanism, feminism, and constructivism. Exceptions to this general trend are highlighted, and the question of how Israeli psychology might become more politically sensitive and critical is explored. This discussion may have relevance for the development ofpolitical psychology in other societies, especially those going through transition of values or suffering from long, violent conflicts.

Most of the social-psychological literature assumes that prosocial behavior is part of the basic human repertoire and only when certain conditions become unfavorable, will the natural prosocial tendency fail (Latane & Darley, 1970). Only few researchers have addressed the general tendency toward bystanding behavior,2 its relation to perpetrating behavior, trying to overcome it in victimizing scenes by activating the bystander and thereby reducing the potential for victimization (Staub, 1996). The present analysis suggests several psychosocial constructs that can account for bystanding behavior. Several factors (such as length of exposure, fragmentation of the planning and execution of the crime) are highlighted—in order to differentiate between low, middle range and high-level bystanding behavior. Finally, ten examples of bystanding behavior during the Holocaust are presented, suggesting that only a careful analysis of the context and its interaction with the persons involved may help us work through and perhaps prevent the potential negative aspects of bystanding behavior in future criminal acts.

Triandis' the ore tical frame work, conce rning cultural patterns labele d individualism and collectivism, is probed with regard to the religious marker in th e Is ra e l i J e wish soc ie ty. Thre e me tho ds a re u se d to e xa min e collectivismindividualism constructs in 185 religious and 956 secular high school students: value items, interest in different domains of history, and attitudes toward political issues. A common collective basis of mutual value consensus was found in the two groups; however, as predicted, there were differences between secular and religious students on the three kinds of items, since the re ligious scored higher than the se cular students on items e mphasizing collectivist orientation. The differences, however, do not fit the common theoretical frame work of collectivismindividualism, but rather tend to reflect the distinction between in-group and universal collectivism.

As a rule, people have related to the external (political or security) difficulties impeding the peace process since the signing of the Oslo agreement. At the basis of this approach lies the assumption that when these difficulties are solved, the psychological difficulties of the individual that may delay the actualization of this most beautiful vision—a real peace between us and our Arab neighbors—will disappear by themselves. Therefore, there is no real need to relate to them at this stage. In this article, we try to undermine this basic assumption. By using narrative analysis of an interview with a student—an officer who spent most of his regular army service in suppression of the Intifada—we try to demonstrate the discourse through which the young Israeli confronts the question of his identity in connection to relations with the Palestinians. The officer (we call him Adi) was chosen because the interview with him exemplifies many of the issues that came up also in other interviews with young Israelis who were involved in the Intifada. The interview demonstrates both the positive qualities as well as the major problems that we found in the other interviews. Throughout the entire interview, we encounter Adi's attempts to maintain his interpretative system even when it no longer matches the reality within which he is acting. (Behavioral Sciences)

Numerous publications describe the original sample of descendants' of Nazi perpetrators in Germany: the silencingby both their families and the German society of their parents' participation in the extermination process during the Third Reich, their working-through process, the 'double wall" phenomenon between them and their parents, the logic of the descendants' moral arguments, their parents' paradoxical morality, the descendants' identification and pseudoidentification with the victims (Bar-On, 1989a, 1989b, 1990a, 1990b, 1991b; Bar-On & Charny, 1992; Bar-On & Gaon, 1991; Rosenthal & Bar-On, 1992). In addition, several television programs and journalists have interviewed the German self-help group that evolved as a by-product of this study.2 The present aiscussion is a follow-up of that study, 712 years after the initial interviews took place, and concentrates on three perspectives: (1) The perspective of the German interviewees: In what way did the numerous interviews, the group work, or both affect their life perspective? (2) the positive and negative roles of the media in this process; and (3) the role of the author as interviewer, participator, observer.

This is a first report of an unusual 4-day workshop that took place in Wuppertal, Germany, in June 1992. Five American and three Israeli children of Holocaust survivors encountered for the first time a group of children of perpetrators of the Holocaust who met regularly as a self-help group since the author interviewed them as part of an exploratory study, between 1985-1988. The workshop was not predesigned, so the members of both groups could help structure its schedule. The members devoted most of the time to getting acquainted with each other's personal stories. A very supportive and open atmosphere evolved, which helped people share intimate details of their life stories. Members of both groups evaluated the workshop as being a beginning of a "therapeutic and inspiring" process. The group decided to meet for two additional workshops in April and July, 1993, in Israel and in the United States. What was learned from this process can be applied to other contexts, like Latin America, Eastern Europe, South-East Asia or the Middle-East, in which families of victims and victimizers in former totalitarian regimes are morally and emotionally still committed to their mutual past.

Previous studies have shown that many children of former Nazi perpetrators either identify with their parents by denying their atrocities, by distancing them-selves emotionally from their parents, or by acknowledging their participation in the extermination process. Through a hermeneutical case study of the narrated life story of a Euthanasia physician's daughter, a type of strategy, which we defined as pseudo-identification with the victim, is reconstructed. The results of the analysis suggest that this is a repair strategy. Putting oneself in the role of one's parents' victim provides refuge from acknowledging possible identification with Nazism and its idols, as well as identifying oneself with the real victims of one's parents. In this case, the psychological consequences of this strategy are described: The woman still suffers from extermination anxieties which block further working through of the past. (Behavioral Sciences)

Genuine and explicit empathy for the victims of one's predecessors' wrongdoings could be a psychological mechanism for preventing future similar atrocities. However, such empathy requires a lot of personal and societal working through that did not take place in Germany during the first 40 years after WWII. "We suffered too" was a major moral argument and normalization strategy found among descendants of Nazis in West Germany. This strategy kept them from relating to the outcomes of their parents' direct or indirect involvement in the Holocaust. In the present study, 31 interviews were content analyzed: 15 children of "perpetrators," 7 children of "witnesses," of the Holocaust, and 9 "children of war," whose parents were not involved in Nazi atrocities. In the search for verbal expressions of empathy for the victims of Nazism, the direct narration of events was analyzed according to three factors: Distinctiveness of the description (remote, proximal, and specific), the Target of the events ("done to us," "done to them") and Distance from the describer ("myself," "our family," "community," and "nation"). On the average, only 45% of the descriptions were direct, and out of these the vast majority were remote, relating to events that had happened to the interviewees and their families. Only in the very few specific and proximate descriptions did subjects relate also to the events that were inflicted by the Nazis on their victims. This was found significantly more among children of witnesses of the Holocaust, when compared to both children of war and children of perpetrators. Although lack of verbal expression of empathy, one generation after victimization, does not necessarily imply emotional indifference, we argue that the inability to empathize with the suffering of others may reinforce those people in today's society who promote discrimination and persecution of minorities. "As a child, one tends to see the parents in a positive light. It is the drive for self-preservation. And then to find out that this person had some really terrible convictions, expressed some terrible views, and held onto them... how can one grasp it? How can you take him for a father?" -One of the interviewees

The present study tests stages in the ability of some children of perpetrators of the Holocaust in Germany to work through emotional and moral issues regarding their fathers' perpetrating role during the Third Reich. The following questions are raised: Did they try to distance themselves by playing down the Holocaust and the moral meaning of their fathers' involvement in it? Did any children try to work through issues relating to their fathers' impaired morality? Did any children successfully reach the stage of integration? Fifty-seven persons were contacted by the author between September 1985 and June 1987, of whom 9 refused to be interviewed. Thirty interviewees were children whose fathers had taken an active part in the implementation of the euthanasia program, in the Einsatzgruppen, in the extermination camps or in related activities. The fathers of the remaining 18 interviewees were affiliated with SS units at times and in places where the atrocities took place, but what they actually did or did not do was not proven. In general, there was an almost total silencing of accounts of the extermination process in homes and schools. Acknowledgment, if any, of the atrocities appeared through accounts of trials and friends and in newspapers or, only recently, through the children's active searching. When children who learned what their father-perpetrator had done during the war also came to understand the moral implications, they usually experienced severe emotional conflict, which they had to confront on their own. Only a few succeeded in walking across a very narrow bridge to a working through of the related issues and emotions. The implications of the present analysis for future research on the prevention and outcomes of genocide are discussed.

Perpetrators and witnesses of the extermination process during the Third Reich use normalization strategies to relate to their atrocious experiences: complete silencing, emotionless descriptions of details, selective descriptions of emotional reactions, etc. The need for normalization is transmitted to offspring by means of a “double-wall,” an emotional phenomenon brought on by both parents and children (Bar-On and Charny, 1988). In the present study, an interview with a German physician from Auschwitz who deliberately did not take part in the massive selection process, and an interview with his son are analyzed. The father-physician creates an effect of normalization by a carefulselective description of his moral and emotional reactions to what he experienced in Auschwitz and since then. It is proposed that the selecting is motivated by the father's covert quest for mastery together with an overt perception of himself as, paradoxically, ‘moral.’ An analysis of the son's report suggests that the father's strategy has been transmitted unwittingly to the son. The son's interview is interpreted as a limited vehicle for going beyond what the parent transmitted and for partially confronting and working through the parent's role during the Nazi era.

This study focuses on an outburst of verbal violence during a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue, aimed at improving the relations between the sides. The turning point was when Waffa, a Palestinian female said to a Jewish male participant: ” …Would you be willing to be friends with a Nazi?” Following up with a clarification of the analogy she is drawing between Nazis and Jews: “I can understand why it is difficult for you to befriend Nazis. Your situation with Nazis that caused you pain and harm is the exact same situation that we have, and this is why I cannot befriend Jews, with what they do to us as we live in this state”. From this point forward the dialogue became highly destructive, with reciprocal exchanges of verbal attacks Through a critical examination of the processes that led up to verbal violence, we hope to contribute to the understanding of intergroup hatred and aggression on both the micro and macro levels of socio-political relations between the sides.

The undiscussible within daily discourse can have intentional and unintentional forms. The first occurs when someone intentionally gears the discourse so that it will not reveal certain facts which have happened (such as being an abused child, or a perpetrator during the Holocaust). We assume that even if they were difficult to reconstruct as part of one's biography, these facts could be verified externally (not only through the feelings of the victim). In the first part of the paper, we analyze the paradoxical nature of such discourse, and show how difficult it is to work through intentional undiscussibility. In the second part, we discuss what happens when the undiscussible facts can not be verified, meaning that there is doubt if events have taken place. By presenting a case study of a German woman who tried to construct a biography in face of certain undiscussibility in her family, we discuss the different social reactions evolving in such reconstruction of feeling-facts. We thereby hope to confront the psychoanalytic approach to narrative analysis with the constructivist hermeneutic one.

In this paper, we advance a new approach to the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust experiences, by focusing on attachment theory. The approach is used as a framework for interpretation of the results of three studies on Holocaust survivors and their offspring, from different countries (The Netherlands, Canada, and Israel), and based on different conceptual approaches and methods of data collection (quantitative as well as qualitative). The literature is divided with regard to the extent and depth of long-term effects of the Holocaust. Attachment theory allows the integration of the phenomena of attachment, separation, and loss, which appear to be core concepts in the three studies presented here. The notion of insecure-ambivalent attachment sheds some light on the observed preoccupation with issues of attachment and separation in the second generation. Furthermore, the theme of “the conspiracy of silence” is discussed in the context of attachment disorganisation. Attachment theory transcends the traditional boundaries between clinical and nonclinical interpretations, in stressing the continuous and cumulative nature of favourable and unfavourable child-rearing circumstances. In this context, insecure attachment should be regarded as coping with suboptimal child-rearing environments.

This study attempts to trace evidence of a suppressed moral conflict in perpetrators of the extermination process during the Third Reich and in perpetrators' children. The questions raised are (a) was there a suppressed conflict of morality in the perpetrators concerning their roles in the Holocaust and did such a conflict surface toward the end of their lives, and (b) did the silence around the parents'perpetrating roles affect the development of an independent "moral" self in the children? Twenty-five Protestant and Catholic priests and 29 physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists were asked about contacts with perpetrators in their relatively secure confessional settings. Only one priest reported a direct encounter with a perpetrator, who confessed his atrocious activities before his death. A physician and a psychiatrist reported hearing similar stories. Evidence shows that some perpetrators allowed a single memory of their experiences in the extermination process to penetrate what they had suppressed. By that memory, they maintained an illusion of their moral selves and were able to prevent full acknowledgment of what they had done or witnessed from threatening their psychological integrity. Also, 30 children of identified perpetrators and 18 children of likely perpetrators (S.S. members who were on duty when and where the extermination process took place) were interviewed in various locations in Germany between September 1985 and October 1987. Most psychological reactions of perpetrator-parents reported by their children can be defined as a "reduction to normality." The difficulty in finding more evidence of the paradoxical conflict of morality in Holocaust perpetrators is attributed, among other reasons, to the "double-wall" phenomenon: perpetrators did not want to disclose their inner conflicts, and others-their children, the potential confessors, and maybe most of us-did not want to know about it. "Why should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in its own heart...! "Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician. "True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by... their nature. Or,-can we not suppose it?-guilty as they may be... they shrink from displaying themselves... because... no evil of the past [can] be redeemed by better service. So, their own unutterable torment, they go about... looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves." "These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth.... "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them...." (Hawthorne [1874], pp. 159-160) It is true that we often translate our egoistic motivations into more "acceptable" utilitarian ones. It may be that the process of developing moral maturity is simultaneous with overcoming such self-deception. (Boyce & Jensen [1978], p. 218)