| Amcha's
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| Target Population |
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| Amcha Services |
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| Gratitude |
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| Directory |
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1. Holocaust survivors
Elderly Holocaust survivors are suffering increasingly from a combination of post-traumatic symptoms such as intrusive thoughts and feelings about their experiences during the Holocaust, and increased feelings of depression and isolation, triggered by the loss of control over bodily and mental functions.
As a result, many are overwhelmed with guilt, sorrow, terrible nightmares and catastrophic fears of impending dangers and imminent catastrophes. In addition to such post-traumatic responses, survivors also respond traumatically to changes that occur as a result of aging: loss of spouses and long-term friends, unemployment and lack of financial resources, social isolation, loneliness and physical impairment. Such changes tend to aggravate the posttraumatic symptoms and increase the number of elderly survivors who require psychological and social support.
2. Survivors who were children during the war ("child survivors")
Surviving the war as a child is a fundamentally different experience than surviving as an adult. Children are at the same time more vulnerable and more malleable than adults are. They experienced the horrors of war at various stages of their cognitive, emotional and personal growth and seem to have suffered impairment and developmental arrest during the long years of confinement and/or family separation. Being abandoned as children and lacking adult protection seems to have created conflicts around their personal identities. In addition, many have adopted a variety of different and extraordinary survival strategies in coping with extreme deprivations. As expected, such early traumatization reverberates across the entire life span of the child survivor and many of these early strategies are maintained all through life.
Despite their often excellent occupational functioning, many child survivors suffer from mental distress and deteriorating strength when approaching retirement. The normative functional decrease during this stage of life may activate fear from the past, delayed grief of the significant losses of their childhood and cause depression.
3. Children of Holocaust survivors (the second generation)
In a complex process known as the transgenerational transmission of parental trauma, children of survivors unconsciously absorb the repressed emotions of their parents. Thus they carry within themselves the burden of the Holocaust and sense the emotional and spiritual meaning they seem to represent for their parents; to fill the empty spaces of the murdered relatives and to console their parents for their multiple losses. The clinical population of offspring tends to present a specific "psychological profile" that includes a mix of resilience and vulnerability when coping with stress.
4. Other family members
An often forgotten group who carries a heavy burden on their shoulders is the spouses of the survivors who live day-by-day with the survivors' memories and distress. They are sometimes the only people who know the silent suffering of the survivors. In addition, there are grandchildren, and others.
5. Various professionals who come into contact with survivors
Professionals who work with survivors in various settings are in need of education and assistance, as well as supervision and special support. Study days, lectures and guidance for mental health and social service professionals are initiated as well as research in the epidemiology and treatment of Holocaust-related mental distress.
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