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Don't Be Silent
Dr. Daniel Bar-On
dcgrcic of social and personal repression and it was difficult to break through the general silence. Germans did not talk of that period in their history, not even with their immediate family or spouses; often, for example, there would be a suitcase in the attic with docimients from the period, of which the children were unaware.
One of the chief results of this study of the children of perpetrators, published as "Legacy of Silence," was the high degree of loneliness that these descendants felt about that part of their biography. Out of their experience in Bar-On's study, a small group of the participants formed a self-help group that met for four years. In 1992, Bar-On asked them if they would be interested in meeting with some Jewish child survivors and children of survivors. This group, which became TLT, first met in 1992; of the 18 participants, nine were German, and nine were Jews from Israel and the United States.
The Victoria Art Gallery lecture included excerpts from the BBC-TV film Children of the Third Reich, an account of the initial meeting of that group of. 18. Although the filmmakers were only allowed to be with the group for two hours of each day, and Bar-On acknowledged that the most difficult issues surfaced away from the camera, even those moments captured on film were searing for the audience members.
At one point, for example, the group members arc shown in a circle, recounting individual biographical stories. As one German
woman tells of her personal pain in learning that her beloved father was a mass murderer, the camera moves to the face of one of tiic Jewish women whose eyes are filled vnth tears of sympatiiy.
Later, that same Jewish woman, whose parents survived but whose extended family members were all killed,' tells of her amazement at how natural it felt to extend human sympathy and an embrace to that German woman.
As one of the oUicr Jewish participants notes on screen, "Wicn I and others write of the impact of the Holocaust, we write about all tlie lost love of all our relatives who perished; but isn't it the same for these Germans, who have also lost love?"
Tliese images of personal reconciliation arc extraordinarily powerful, and Bar-On has been attempting to replicate these experiences with other inheritors of conflict. He cautions, however, that it is an extraordinarily slow process, Uiat can only be adiieved in small groups, and with the gradual building up of mutual trust. Slow and painstaking, but a small light of hope for future generations.
Isa Milman, co-ordinator of tlie event under the auspices of the Victoria Holocaust Remembrance and Education Society, hopes Uiat her oi^anization will be able to bring Bar-On back for a longer workshop with second and third generation participants. As she puts it, "This is the only and best way to move forward." □
Klttly Hoffman is a freelance writer living in Victoria.
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