Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust

Using verbatim accounts of therapy sessions, Dina Wardi shows how, as adults, children of Holocaust survivors suffer from trauma unconsciously transmitted to them by their parents, and how they can benefit from professional help.

As the children of the Holocaust reach adulthood, they often need professional help in establishing a new identity and self-esteem. During their childhood their parents have unconsciously transmitted to them much of their own trauma, investing them with all their memories and hopes, so that they become ''memorial candles'' to those who did not survive. The book combines verbatim transcriptions of dialogues in individual and group psychotherapy sessions with analyses of dreams, fantasies and childhood memories. Diana Wardi traces the emotional history of her patients, accompanying them on a painful and moving journey into their inner world. She describes the children''s infancy in the guilt-laden atmosphere of survivor families, through to their difficult separation from their parents in maturity. she also traces in detail the therapeutic process which culminates in the patients'' separation from the role of ''memorial candle''.