World War II,  Ukraine, Gaza. 

Wars are still everywhere, either in memory or in current experience.  World War II is the most distant, but there are still a few survivors. One of them is my mother, who is now 98 years old.  She is a very sweet old lady, she has forgotten who she was, and is, and she confuses people, times and locations.  But, she is the kindest of people, never complaining, never aggressive.  This is how she always was: I cannot remember a single time when she complained about anything. 

This page is a partial analytical summary of a few long conversations I had with her, shortly before her mind began to let go of its lifelong discipline of holding things together.  We talked quietly, outside, as she meandered through her war life in a long relaxed monologue. It is one of the most valuable gifts from her: diving back, retrieving details, trying to give a balanced and reflected view, switching between the most detailed memories of particular incidents, and reflections about her role in the Nazi time.  

She is a WWII survivor whose survival mechanism was to distance herself from difficult experiences at an emotional level, and to use her brain to turn everything into positive aspects. It helped her through traumatic war years, and  later, through all her demanding later life.  She had 3 consecutive careers: first, as a musician. Then, as a teacher at a public school, and then, until late into her eighties, as private teacher for kids with learning disability. 

Born 1929, she was only 10 years old when the war started, and she was 15 when the war ended.  She spent the war years mostly away from home, in the "Kinderlandverschickung", working for soldiers, in a labor camp, under enemy fire, exposed to life threatening situations. But, when she told us about it, she remembered it as a good time. We did not understand what was below that. 

As children, we never really understood her history - the war was far away, and children have other things to do than research into their parents trauma.  We just took our parents with their inexplicable habits.  My mother, for example, never spent any money on herself, she saved for bad times. And, she was completely - so it seemed to use - without emotions.  Instead, she was 100% focused on her profession as a teacher. 

As a grown-up, I have a hard time, as I reread, to get that she was only 10 when the war began - her memories still being so clear and precise. Memories of bombs falling, of the family running for shelter, and she, the next morning, collecting bomb splitters with her comrades. 

Survivor research 

There are several strands of research into their history. Two of them are represented here: 

• Individual traume: what was the psychological long-term impact on the children and youth over their life? How did they cope? 

• Intergenerational trauma: what was the long-term impact on the children and grandchildren - and even further down the chain - of these survivors?  This concerns me, for example, and my children. 

There is, I then noticed, also another strand of research, which I find interesting. It is the way, survivors build memories, and talk about them.  There is also a strand of research called "oral history research".  I may come back to this. 

• Language-oriented ("oral history research"):  what are the typical linguistic patterns in which history is represented verbally? How does language help to hide or reveal what actually happened?

Ukraine and Gaza

When my mother told me about the war in this manner, WW2 was 73 years in the past: three quarters of a century.  And still, the effect of her memories lingers in me, my siblings, my children and grandchildren.  This intergenerational traume. In this case, very typical for Germany, it resulted in emotional silencing and neglect. 

Germans were the culprits, and silence was the appropriate means - so it seemed - to cover up.  

Children from Ukraine and Gaza (this place of incomprehensible genocide by the victims of Germans, which is now even criticised by Chancellor Merz) will not result in a silenced generation.  As  Anthony Blinken once said:  "We assess the Hamas has gained at least as many fighters as it has lost".  

The traumatised children of Ukraine and Gaza will be violent rather than subdued.  This is, for example, what German teachers in classes with Ukrainian and other refugees experience: "every pen is imagined as a gun. They only know violence, kicking, throwing to solve conflicts. They do not respect any authority" (a teacher to me).