In our exploration of the Holocaust, the concept of the so-called 'second Holocaust' was presented, which is described by Laub and colleagues ( 1997) such as the grief felt among Holocaust survivors when they are “relived with postwar losses,” in ways that may lack “conscious awareness” of their resurgent trauma (Peskin et al., 1997, p. 1 ). The manifestation of this phenomenon is found most clearly in the accounts of survivors, as well as, perhaps crucially, in the experiences of the children of Holocaust survivors, who, together with their parents, are described as resigned to a situation "attenuated" and devitalized lives” (Peskin et al., p. 1). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay This work will consider the concept of the “second Holocaust” through the context of the survivor literature we have explored, and I will use it as a point from which to present my reflections on this extremely challenging topic, especially as it reflects the ways subconscious in which pain can be expressed and how people's deepest pain is often poorly understood or difficult to control following extensive trauma. Through considerations of the work of Primo Levi and Charlotte Delbo, this work will show that the acute fears and concerns faced by these survivors in the aftermath of their liberation from the concentration camps inform every aspect of their lives thereafter. Although each would go on to lead productive and fruitful lives, both would continue to be haunted by the trauma they had experienced, especially as that trauma manifested itself in abstract forms, especially in their dreams. Both of these authors suffered a terrible "Second Holocaust", as shown in their work. This work will explore the nature of this resurgent trauma and attempt to show how this pain is expressed in their works. Primo Levi and the Fear of Silence A key piece that has informed my understanding of this concept is Primo Levi's work If This Is a Man (1947), which describes in extraordinary detail the terrible pain and anguish faced by Levi – who was held at Auschwitz for nearly a year – where the major difficulties often pale in comparison to the more mundane problems faced by those who avoided immediate execution. The work contains a strong consideration of the wider psychological effects of the camps, particularly the way in which those held there were silenced, often through brutal violence at the hands of callous guards, but equally often through the work exhausting they were forced to reform or lose their spirit. The work is full of smaller moments elevated to life-or-death struggles, including a fight for a piece of bread or a pair of shoes, and throughout the reader is given the author's unique insight into this terrible world. Perhaps it is simple to understand the root of this author's trauma; After all, the Holocaust took a terrible toll among survivors, including on a psychological level. To this end, the reader may not be able to readily understand the author's confusion when faced with the dreams that begin to consume his sleep, in which he was at home and telling people about his experiences, only to be greeted with indifference either confusion or total denial of his experiences. he states. Although Levi was freed along with the rest of Auschwitz and was able to move on with his life, it is this fear of denial and confusion among those to whom he tried to tell hishistory that constitute his 'second holocaust'. While this is not a cliché, Levi managed to survive and return to a world where memories of the Holocaust are often mixed with skepticism and the slow decline of the popular imagination. The threat of his pain being nullified or "repelled" by the forces of indifference can be seen as an element of the Holocaust psyche. Survivors forming, albeit unconsciously, the core of their trauma in the decades that followed. A key point that is established through this work's consideration of both the author's time spent in the camps, and with respect to his traumatized life that followed, is whether there was a greater purpose to the suffering he and his companions faced at the hands of their tormentors. Levi's search for broader meaning in his experience is notable for the way he manages to imbue his presentation of one of the twentieth century's worst excesses with a sense of force, and his philosophical posture informs the larger work . Levi is not simply a man who has lived through a terrible experience – one that few would be able to understand – and lives to tell the tale, nor does the work take the form of a mere list of grievances against the horrors of state-induced genocide. Instead, Levi attempts to find greater meaning in his experience, especially with respect to the possibility that it can be used to better reflect on any aspect of human nature: pushed to the brink, Levi responds not with anger or pain, but with silent introspection. . It is in this position that the work makes some of its greatest contributions to eyewitness history. In his description of how humanity reacts when every “civilized institution is taken away,” as in a situation where the machinations of politics and industry have been set in motion. put to work in such a profoundly profane way as The Holocaust, Levi does not despair; Instead, he argues that in this situation, this does not necessarily reduce both perpetrators and victims to the depths of “brutality, selfishness, and stupidity” (Levi, 1947, p. 100). Instead, the main conclusion he draws is that of a general desperation, through his observation that “in the face of the need to drive and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are silenced” (Levi, p. 100). it can be argued that this observation reflects his view of the concentration camp system and the inherent silence it brought to its worst victims - forced, perhaps, into silence by their extreme brutality - these observations can be extended to inform his observations on the world he found during his escape. Although his descriptions of his pain and suffering appear to end with his escape, the "Second Holocaust" for which Levi is particularly unprepared can best be described in the same language he uses to inform his explanation of life's eternally profound pain within the world. fields. When he explains that his rare moments of gallows humor were to be experienced with “painful amazement” at seeing that more, and worse, suffering goes beyond that already experienced, an entirely separate kind of suffering awaits him in the world of relative peace. to follow (Levi, p. 82). This is an internal turmoil and often present in the context of his dreams. The nature of this second suffering, and indeed, Levi's "Second Holocaust", is one that is informed by the nature of the suffering he experienced, but which he fears may not later be believed. In this way Levi expresses his deepest fears that the outside world might make his terrible struggles invisible or nullify them. Far from using Holocaust memory as a means togaining a greater understanding of human nature, he fears (as shown in his dreams) that he will discover, once released, that the observations he made about the Holocaust would be as easily extrapolated to inform the postures, behaviors, and mindsets of those he imagines they learned them second hand. That is, through his dreams of attempting to inform the world about his experiences, he would find their response to mirror the same kind of silence that came to mask the passions and hatreds of his fellow camp survivors, perhaps as a means of putting him to to remain silent, or as a means of ensuring one's protection from unknown or hostile ideas about humanity. Whether out of self-protection or disbelief, he fears finding that the people with whom he attempts to share his experiences would welcome them with “complete indifference” (Levi, 1947, p. 138). Those who allowed themselves the luxury of skepticism (or perhaps didn't want to listen to his terrible story) chose instead to "talk confusedly about something else between them, as if I wasn't there" (Levi, p. 65). In this way, Levi's 'Second Holocaust' – which takes the form of a recurring dream he will have throughout the rest of his life – is the manifestation of a second suffering, only this time, instead of inflaming the world with indignation , has fallen on deaf ears, that is, it takes the form of the "always repeated scene of the unheard story" (Levi, p. 65). In many ways, through Levi's calculated and focused approach to presenting the details of his suffering, he sought to imbue his story with greater meaning, as if the Holocaust (much more than a massive crime) could manifest itself as a moment of teaching for all humanity. In his writings and with his observations Levi contributes precisely to this. Yet he continues to suffer the fate, if only in dreams, of a man who faced oblivion and the deepest depths of human cruelty, and then returned to find that no one would believe his story. In this way, perhaps, it was his “Second Holocaust” that pushed Levi to write If This Is a Man, primarily as an expression of defiance or “lash” against this horrible but pervasive fear. Extrapolated to a larger predominantly Jewish population of Holocaust survivors, this fear (that the world would not believe them or ignore their plight) may serve to explain the continued prevalence of Holocaust survivor accounts and other literary works by witnesses eyepieces. Charlotte Delbo and Mourning The Self A second and very similar example of such resurgent traumatic memory is found in Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After, in which this author, after being buried in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Ravensbruck, uses short vignettes and poems to describe her experiences, particularly the hunger and thirst, as well as the beatings and deprivations that she and her buried companions had to face in these concentration camps. In one depiction, however, that mirrors Levi's work, he describes a series of events that happen to those who survived to return home: Among the stories of a woman who could never get warm (no matter how many layers she piled on) , or an innocent man accused of betraying his resistance comrades after his release, is Delbo's account that serves to so strongly support the idea of ​​the "second holocaust". In this work, she explains that she has dreams in which she escaped from the concentration camp, only to choose to return of her own free will. In this way - like Levi - Delbo torments himself with these dreams, through the continuous and unconscious 'relapses' of the pain suffered; Acute trauma shaped this survivor's life and, as such, provides a unique means of understanding the experience of Holocaust survivors as afflicted by the loss of self. Morethat the fear of returning of one's own free will, the work is compounded by the trauma of Delbo and the other survivors, who she describes as a pitiful population, whose suffering was so great and their pain was so strong that they remained indelibly marked by their experiences in the concentration camps for the rest of their lives. He explains, towards the end of the first book, in a section titled "None of Us Will Return", that there is a statement of absolute fatalism about the existence of those who survived the Holocaust because so great was their suffering: " What difference does it make?" ago”, he asks, referring to the quality of life lived outside the camps, during a resurgent and perhaps provocative life as a survivor, in light of how “none of them will return, since none of us return” (Delbo, 1995, p . 18). This observation may seem paradoxical at first glance, but it reflects the profound changes that each of the survivors experiences, as well as the fear – in each of them – of no longer being the same people they were before their departure. This idea forms the core of Delbo's conceptualization of her "Second Holocaust", with the idea that much of herself was removed, forcibly, into the camps, that she was no longer the same person she was when she entered them. Looking at the images of the surviving victims of the liberated concentration camps, one can first notice the horrible gaunt and emaciated forms of those individuals, but the most disturbing thing for me are always the eyes of these individuals. They are people without hope, even if some photographs of this period were taken by the liberating Allied forces. Through Delbo's writings one can understand much better the impact of the Holocaust on those who survived; This was not simply a time of great trauma that they had some difficulty dealing with once the trauma was complete. In many ways, not only was their trauma so great, but their escape so entirely unlikely, that they are not the same people. While this idea may seem like hyperbole, there is much more behind this; Delbo herself claims to understand her great fortune in the fact that she was unable to recognize herself in the memories of Auschwitz, as if that person - who suffered those horrors - was another person, and having escaped to tell the story, she was a different person from that version of herself who had suffered so horribly. This fear brings this consideration back to the crux of Delbo's "second Holocaust," to his frequent dreams of returning to the camps, as if drawn there by a manic compulsion. In this context, this cannot be seen as some kind of masochistic desire, she evidently has no reason to want to return for any reason, yet she still dreams of returning to the camps. There are many reasons why this could be the case, but I believe the simplest explanation lies in the dissociation that has been described, as well as the loss of self, personality, and humanity, that he suffered during his traumatic experience. complicated beast, and manifests itself in many ways, not all of which are rational or easily describable with clear arguments based on reason or causality. I believe – since there is little evidence in this work to indicate why she dreams this way, and it is likely that she does not know herself – that Delbo dreams of returning out of a desire to save a version of herself that she left behind. This is an irrational concept, but dreams are rarely rational. Delbo mourns the lost version of herself who was – if not literally – then figuratively killed in the camps, and as a result feels a unique kind of survivor's grief: she survived, and by rights she should feel happy to have survived, but.