Survivor’s Guilt
Some of the people responsible for genocide—even the killers themselves—have walked away from their horrific acts in atrocities like the Holocaust feeling hardly any guilt or even no guilt at all. Yet, many survivors have walked away from the same atrocities, in which they were victimized and had no responsibility for the heinous actions of the perpetrators, feeling a sense of guilt that has sometimes become too much for them to bear.
Psychology Today provides, “Survivor’s guilt is something that people experience when they’ve survived a life-threatening situation and others might not have” (Source 1). Survivor’s guilt is not uncommon and is especially prevalent among Holocaust survivors. It is disturbing to consider how the guilt resulting from such an atrocity can ultimately be distributed such that some of the people who feel the most guilt are not actually at fault in any way. Further, the fact that the horrible acts of the perpetrators continue to make some survivors feel a sense of powerlessness in their lives, as they are forced to face a psychological condition that prevents them from being able to move on with their lives, while many perpetrators have been able to move on without feeling guilt or prolonged emotional disturbance, adds to the injustice of the situation further.
Psychology professor Raymond Bergner explains survivor’s guilt: “People believe in a just world, where everyone gets what they deserve … When they survive and others die—and they believe they are no more deserving than the others—they’ve gotten something they don’t deserve. And that is something they feel guilty about” (Source 2). Bergner’s description helps add a dimension to the questions of whether justice can ever truly exist in certain situations and how people can find closure after experiencing the worst of humanity and facing extremely severe trauma and pain. Perhaps the belief in a "just world," as referenced by Bergner, leading the people who were victimized by the injustice to feel guilty, and thus continue to face even more pain, may demonstrate that justice, in some instances, may not be reachable. Yet, even if that is the case, the role of justice as a moral guide to people, and evidence of what happens in a society where the ideal of justice is completely abandoned and people see no potential consequences for appalling decisions, emphasizes that it is essential for people in a society to strive for justice nonetheless.
Being a victim in the Holocaust is obviously incredibly hard to survive and if one survives, they already have to deal with the horrible things they've seen and their loved ones be taken away or killed. It is therefore even more sad when these survivors suffer from survivor's guilt because they've already been through so much and they most likely want to move on and try to live the rest of their life somewhat normally but are unable to do so because of the guilt they feel. People also feel that survivors bear the responsibility to tell people about what happened so people remember what happened and learn from the atrocities committed but this forces the victims to continually relive what they experienced.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. I think this relates a lot to people coming home from war and having PTSD. I volunteer at the Veterans Hospital and a lot of men staying their feel guilty that maybe one of their friends died, or they saw some locals die, and they feel like they could have done more (of course I didn't hear this from one of them, I heard it from a man's wife). But, I do see a lot of similarities.
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