A Second Generation’s Reckoning

A Second Generation’s Reckoning

As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, I posed a question to my fellow members of a Facebook group for children of Holocaust survivors: How are you feeling during these days of rising antisemitism and global upheaval? The responses, mostly from Americans, revealed a community gripped by fear that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago.

We 2Gs, Second Generation Survivors, belong to a club no one would choose to join.  We are not survivors, yet we have been profoundly shaped by the Holocaust, and we share a bond that it is singular. Many of us have had the same arguments I had with my family whenever we were warned that “it could happen again.” I completely dismissed my relatives’ certainty that as trauma speaking, not reality. Was I wrong?

After the Bondi Beach massacre, the latest in a series of deadly attacks targeting Jews, my anxiety reached new heights. There, Jews were again like sitting ducks waiting to be picked off. Despite the best efforts of Jewish organizations, law enforcement, and governments, the violence isn’t decreasing. It’s accelerating. My mother’s repeated refrain, which I hear on numerous phone calls during the week from my home in Jerusalem to hers in New York City is hard to argue with nowadays. Her traumatic experience was a certainty that my distance from the Holocaust denied me. Until now, and I find myself unable to argue as I once did.

The voices from my community of mostly Anglos tell a story of rising worry like mine. One member wrote of nervousness about being tied down by homes and jobs in America. Another described feeling the actions of 1930s Germany unfolding here and now. The University of Pennsylvania’s request for names and information on Jewish students struck one member as especially frightening.

“I no longer feel safe,” one person shared. “Will they at some time round us up? I try to tell myself no. It’s very difficult.”

Several members described significant PTSD triggered by current events. One person spoke of falling into deep depression after the Australia attack, barely able to function. Another mentioned spending years in therapy learning that “the Holocaust was then and we are safe”—only to conclude that their mother was right: it never goes away. This comment got lots of likes, including from me.

Most striking is how many are contemplating leaving. “I think it’s time to get out of Dodge,” wrote one member, encouraging family to make aliyah to Israel. While many respondents professed newfound support Israel these days moving to Israel was in fact not high on the list of options. Another, noting that they could obtain German citizenship while their parents had no choice, asked: “Is there a safe place for a Jew in the world today?”

As one community member put it simply: “I see it happening and am making plans. I cannot relive this history.”

Perhaps most haunting: “I’m really glad my parents aren’t alive. My dad’s paranoia was 100% correct.”

While I am thrilled that my 95-year-old survivor mother is still alive, I am pained beyond words that she so strongly believes she is witnessing—again– the beginning of another period where Jews will be unsafe in the extreme.

The Holocaust was the air my family breathed even when no one spoke about it. Any 2G would relate. Yet for most of my life, I believed I was lucky enough to be born into a different world, one where the danger was gone, Israel existed, the world had learned, and Jews were finally safe.

Now many of us second-generation survivors, including me, are not so sure.