Trauma of Holocaust survivors passed down through generations
By Mike Ludwig
Campus Reporter
May 5, 2008
Ohio University graduate student Andrea Keys had recurring nightmares of violent battles and rumbling tanks when she was a young girl, and she didn’t know why. Then, when she was 16, Keys’ parents revealed that her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. That fact had been kept a family secret through her parents’ generation, but Keys is not allowing it be a secret any longer.
The truth inspired Keys to learn about the “intergenerational trauma” that affected the relationships between her family members, and last Thursday she went public with her and her grandmother’s story, to celebrate Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) during a vigil at OU’s Baker Center.
Key’s grandmother, Emmy Collin, never publicly spoke about her Holocaust experience until she was interviewed on video near the end of her life. Her story was a painfully familiar one: a 19-year-old girl leaves her home for the ghetto, and then from the ghetto was shipped to the infamous concentration camps at Auschwitz. This record of Collin’s story was a central piece of Key’s presentation.
“There are different types of Holocaust survivors,” Keys said. “My grandmother was one who went numb.”
Collin, whose parents were Jewish, grew up in a small, secluded mountain town in Hungary. Her community was virtually unaffected by the horrors of World War II until Nazi tanks suddenly rolled through their streets in 1944. Collin remembered watching the tanks with her father from the balcony of their house.
“He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘The Germans are here, that’s the end of us,’” Collins recalled in her video interview. “But I didn’t get it.”
First Collin and her family were “branded” with a yellow star. Then they were sent to a Jewish ghetto where they were made to live in horse stables. Eight people were crammed into each stable. Their last stop was Auschwitz, where Collin and her mother were separated from Collin’s father. They never saw him again.
Collin believed that she lost her mind in the camp. She doesn’t remember much of her experience, but she was told that she sat on the ground, nearly naked, and stared off into space for hours. Her mother did everything she could to keep her alive.
“When that water truck came, she fought like a tiger to get water for me,” Collin said of her mother.
Collin eventually left the camp to work as a slave laborer at a factory in a nearby town. There she volunteered to follow a small group of German soldiers through the front lines. She remembered lying in a field as American tanks liberated the area. She was with two other women, and they didn’t move until a Russian prisoner approached them and told them they were finally free.
A year later, in November of 1946, Collin was reunited with her husband, who would become Keys’ grandfather. He had lost every member of his family to the Nazis. They quickly moved to Virginia and changed their name from Svizo to Collin. They wanted to forget about their traumatic experience, so they didn’t tell anyone they were from Europe, or that they were Holocaust survivors. They didn’t even tell their own children about their heritage until they were 16 years old.
“As my grandmother said,” Keys continued, “we just wanted to blend into the wallpaper.”
According to Keys, her grandparents “hidden memories” manifested as an inability to show love for their children and grandchildren. Keys said that she never had a proper, loving relationship with her grandmother due to the emotional trauma that was passed down through her family. "My grandmother’s inability to show love or speak of love made it very difficult for my mother to do the same," Keys said. "Love was always surrounded by fear and anxiety. My grandmother never told my mother or myself that she loved us. My mother did not tell me until I was 15; I remember that day very well.
"Needless to say, my grandparent’s repressed memories became manifest in fear and anxiety, which were passed on to my mother, and in turn, passed on to me. It could go on, but I will not let it."
In reference to her grandmother's terrorized mental state, Keys continued, “Trauma occurs when your brain can’t fit or understand the information that’s coming into it."
Keys showed symptoms of intergenerational trauma as well. She remembers the recurring and unexplained nightmares of tanks and war, and she knows that she directly inherited them from her grandparents. She also had an intense and irrational fear of being separated from her parents as a child, and she would cry if her father was late coming home from work.
Keys’ studies of her family, and the symptoms of intergenerational trauma that it suffered, inspired her to create a series of ceramic sculptures to symbolize the struggle. Her family’s past has been kept a secret for so long, she said, and she wants to be the generation that breaks the silence.
“As a third generation, I could let it go on, but I won’t,” Keys said.
Keys reminded her audience that genocide is still occurring today, and it will affect generations of people for years to come. It is our duty to remember those who have suffered at the hands of violence and tyranny, she said, and to do what we can to help those who are the victims of genocide in our modern world.
“In remembrance lies the seeds of transformation and renewal,” Keys said. “This can always happen.”
Keys is a master’s in fine arts candidate in ceramics. Her presentation was sponsored and organized by Hillel, a community organization for Jewish students at OU.
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