I heard this phrase the other day on Radio 4 (I will edit and add the name of the programme when I remember it) and it seemed a very good description for some thing that I have only ever thought of as a sort of inherited emotional scarring. I think I have mentioned before that Mrs Bored's father was a Jewish Hungarian immigrant here before World War II as he came over to work as a glove maker in Cardiff. The war broke out and he was here when, in 1944, his family were first forced into the Budapest ghetto and all but two were then sent to the concentration camps and killed. After the war, he married my mother-in-law and they had Mrs Bored. Mrs B says that he never spoke about his dead relatives but, when documentaries about the Holocaust were on, he would be watching intently the footage of those being loaded onto the trains to the camps and, she now knows, he was looking to see if he could see the faces of his family. Of course, this is a time before counselling or therapy for post-traumatic stress. What I find telling is that, during the first couple of visits to meet Mrs B's mum, I asked if they argued. I think this is because I come from, what you may call, an emotionally demonstrative family and my (future) mother-in-law struck me as a very serene calm person and I wondered if Mrs B's dad - who had died long before I met her - was the same or a complete opposite. She told me that they never argued - an answer for which I had no field of reference which which to comprehend. She explained that, if there was any disagreement, he would go quiet...for about three or four days. I asked what she did during this time and she said she just did all the stuff around the house that she needed to while he ignored her and remained mute behind the paper until the argument was over. This end was signalled by him coming home and there being a bunch of flowers or chocolates on the table and that was that, end of argument - no discussion, resolution or anything. From the six months or so that I had been going out with Mrs B., I noticed a certain quiet sulkiness and, having heard this story, realised that there was no way that I, of all people, could sit there quietly for four or five days and I ended up sort of poking her verbally in order to provoke a reaction if she was quiet during a disagreement. I am not sure this was the best tactic necessarily but we are, for better or worse, an emotionally demonstrative couple and have been together decades in this manner. However, there are certain elements of her behaviour or mannerisms that I do wonder still are down to a sort of inherited coming-to-terms (or lack thereof) with her father's loss.
Anyway, my anecdotal evidence aside, there must be thousands of families who had one or may be even both parents or grandparents who went through the massive horrific loss from the Holocaust (let alone other wars and, indeed, genocides). Added to this, without counselling or therapy, these survivors have had to deal with grief, survivors' guilt etc. on their own or, at best, in discussion with loved ones who quite often have no concept of what such loss on a massive scale can feel like. This direct effect on survivors is one thing but I do wonder whether this sort of emotion scarring or trauma actually carries on through generations of descendants who may not even have any conception of what the initial event was like.
Anyway, my anecdotal evidence aside, there must be thousands of families who had one or may be even both parents or grandparents who went through the massive horrific loss from the Holocaust (let alone other wars and, indeed, genocides). Added to this, without counselling or therapy, these survivors have had to deal with grief, survivors' guilt etc. on their own or, at best, in discussion with loved ones who quite often have no concept of what such loss on a massive scale can feel like. This direct effect on survivors is one thing but I do wonder whether this sort of emotion scarring or trauma actually carries on through generations of descendants who may not even have any conception of what the initial event was like.
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