Memory and Resilience

Abstract

This study reviews the memories of 40 Holocaust survivors who reflected on their lives more than 60 years after liberation. The participants were randomly selected from the larger group of Holocaust survivors in the ''Forgiveness, Resiliency, and Survivorship Among Holocaust Survivors'' study funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Data collected from open-end questions about their memories were analyzed. The findings revealed that their critical memories involve loss, violence, and survival. The legacies of these survivors reflect the importance of reconstructing family, transmitting values, contributing to the community, and educating the next generation. Survivors' ability to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust demonstrate that memory promoted resilience by enabling them to remember the past, to share their meaningful stories with others, to remember why and how they survived, and to find meaning in the aftermath of such injustice. Their remembrances provide historical specificity to survivors' experiences and their ability to develop resilience. Despite negative and traumatic experiences, people can resolve the tension between integrity and despair.

From mourning severed to mourning recovered: Tribute and remembrance strategies for families of the victims of Francoist repression

“…On the one hand, resilience is the ability of those concerned to adapt to external disruptions. Some authors have even established a relationship between the preservation of memory in the family domain and the resilience of survivors subjected to traumatic situations (Cohen et al., 2010). 4 On the other hand, research has been done on the many creative everyday forms of struggle undertaken by humble people in their bid to resist authoritarian domination (Scott, 1985, 1990).…”

Memory in narratives and stories: implications for nursing research

“…Memories also exist within a "hierarchy of meaning" (Gaydos 2005 p.256), whereby what an individual remembers is significant to that person, and so is already imbued with meaning (Cohen et al 2010). Memory is also a vehicle that can be used by people to create identityby interpreting the past, however traumatic -in order to attribute a meaning of events that is acceptable to them.…”

“…Memory is also a vehicle that can be used by people to create identityby interpreting the past, however traumatic -in order to attribute a meaning of events that is acceptable to them. Creating meaning out of traumatic events is undertaken in this way and makes the past traumatic episode meaningful to the present self (Cohen et al 2010).…”

“…Remembering why and how an individual has survived an experience and how they have been able to live meaningfully after it builds resilience (Cohen et al 2010). Thus, memory is integral to identity creation (Baddeley et al 2015), and is mirrored in healthcare contexts among individuals searching for meaning when experiencing illness (Skaggs & Barron 2006).…”

Resilience and International Politics: Premises, Debates, Agenda

“…To be sure, resilience studies and traumatic memory studies share many premises. Traumatic memory studies emphasize, as resilience studies do, a turning point, a critical juncture, a before‐and‐after sequence (Cohen, Meek, and Lieberman ). Both studies see aspects of a traumatic event as being socially constructed, that is, the event's components (or the event itself), the positive/negative consequences of the events, and the meaning and significance of the event are interpretative moments (Alexander ) .…”