Over the years, people have debated on the impacts of certain historical events, which affect an entire culture or group of people, their children and future generations. One of the remarkable events that impacted an entire race is the Holocaust, a massacre executed by the Nazi regime in the 1930s against the Jewish community. The Holocaust has been described as one of the world’s worst genocides and is believed to have claimemillion Jews (n.pag). So, what are the impacts of such a masd the lives of approximately six sacre on the survivors and their children? While there is no doubt that the survivors suffered a great deal of psychological trauma following the holocaust, scholars contest whether the trauma can be passed on to the future generations.
While the modern generations learn the impacts of the Holocaust massacre from the books of history, children and grandchildren of the survivors learn about the massacre from their parents or grandparents. Although a prudent person may expect children to be compassionate in learning the ordeals that their parents went through, studies have not established substantive evidence to prove that these children are likely to acquire symptoms of holocaust trauma from their parent. Contrastingly, the article by Nathan-Kazis shows that learning the stories of the holocaust from the books of history is as traumatic as listening to a survivor’s narration of the ordeal. Therefore, Holocaust trauma affects the survivors, but may not be passed on from one generation to another. However, Nathan-Kazis admits that the area of the impacts of holocaust on future generations is still under review, with genogram scholars trying to identify the genomic impact of traumatic experience on children and grandchildren.
Works Cited
Nathan-Kazis, Josh.Can Holocaust Trauma Affect ‘Third Generation’? (2012). Web. 5th August 2015.