Dealing with Holocaust trauma through music
When psychologist Paula David started her new job as a social worker at the Baycrest Centre, a Jewish home for seniors assisted in Toronto, Canada, in the early 1990s, she had no idea what was to come.
Although she was trained in group trauma therapy, the field of study was not as developed as it is today.
Meanwhile, the 14 elderly women who regularly saw her for group therapy were all Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe.
Women initially did not want to talk about their childhood and youth.
“At first they told me very clearly that they couldn’t tell these stories, that they didn’t have the words for them,” David said.
Instead, the psychologist talked to the participants about their daily lives, their children and grandchildren for a year.
Over time, some of the women began to show early symptoms of dementia, meaning their earlier traumatic memories were clearer than their more recent experiences.
Finally the “dam broke”, as David once said in a TV interview. Now that women trusted her, she heard shocking testimonies of human experiments, torture, loss of children or other close relatives, sexual abuse, terrible hunger, disease and forced sterilization.
Source: DW
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