Description
Book SynopsisTrauma was a potent influence in the lives of pre-1924 Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They uprooted themselves because of grinding poverty, anti-Semitic discrimination, pogroms, and the violence of World War I. This book's psychoanalytically-informed life stories, based on 22 in-depth interviews with the immigrants' adult children, tell the tales of these immigrants and their children.Many of the children believed their parents had left their lives in Eastern Europe behind them. This disavowalaided by the immigrants' silence and denial--allowed their children to minimize the trauma and loss their parents suffered both before and after immigrating. I analyze the impact of parental trauma and loss on the second generation. Trauma and loss affected the transmission of memory, and, consequently, often immigrants' recollections were not passed on to future generations. The topics of trauma and loss in the lives of Eastern European immigrants are relevant in understanding current immigr
Trade ReviewExamining the narratives of her interview subjects through a psychoanalytic lens, Hannah Hahn has written a highly compelling and evocative account of how trauma and loss experienced in immigration—and their recognition and disavowal—impact the transmission of memory through successive generations. -- Karen Starr, author of Repair of the Soul and co-author of A Psychotherapy for the People: Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis
Not only does this book break the silence and inform us about the psychological lives of pre-1924 Eastern European Jewish immigrants, but it also provides a window into thinking about other pogroms: Armenians, Greeks, Turks, and Palestinian Arabs, for example, and about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and loss. They Left it All Behind is a compelling and timely book. In fact, this psychoanalytically-informed book is a “must read”. -- Judith L. Alpert, New York University
