THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

1943, upon hearing of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, later became the hymn of thePartisans who fought the Nazis. Glick joined the Partisans, fought the Nazis anddisappeared in 1944. “Say not that you are walking down your last path,” means thatsomeone said publicly that it was his last path. The poet and the singers rebuke him.Since then, along the slippery road, the Israeli mindset has changed drastically.Israel adopted this legacy of insecurity characteristic of trauma victims. Since then,we live under constant pressure and in the contradiction of unceasing armament tocompensate and atone for built-in impotence and existential anxiety. We have becomea nation of victims, and our state religion is the worship and tending of traumas, as ifIsrael forever walks down its last path.In recent years, the subjects of sexual violence, harassment, and abuse becamepublic and several methods of treatment for the victims have developed. With thesenew tools, we can begin to understand the mind of Shoah victims and then approachthat which is beyond human comprehension. Judith Loyis Herman’s book Traumaand Recovery is a powerful and fascinating look at human suffering and desperationthat offers hope for treatment and recuperation.Herman attempted to understand the depth of the traumatic experience and to findin it the key for a spiritual recovery. She interviewed victims of post-traumatic stressdisorder from battlefields and concentration camps and also victims of crimes,vulnerable family members (especially women and children), former hostages,prisoners of wars and rape victims. Her documentation is stunning and horrifying, butnot without hope. The healing process that she proposes is long, slow, and requirespatience, but it offers the hope of a future that is at least as good as the pre-traumaticpast. I would like to borrow some of her insights in order to understand the Israeliparadox that pairs power with weakness, nuclear weapons with paranoia, solidinternational status with the-worldis-against-us mentality.The victim asks the bystander to share with him the burden of hispain...He demands action, involvement and memory. Psychiatrist LeoAtinger, who studied survivors of Nazi concentration camps,describes the cruel conflict of interest between victims and bystanders.“The community seeks to forget the war and its victims,” he writes. “Aveil of amnesia is drawn over everything painful and unpleasant. Wefind the two sides standing face to face; on one side are the victims,who, perhaps, want to forget but are unable to, and on the other side