“I have terrible nightmares and I’d like to know if the children of other survivors have similar nightmares. I tell myself it’s crazy for someone who didn’t live through the war to have such precise dreams.”

Why, among Jewish families, do the children of survivors of the Nazi death camps have the same dreams as their parents — even if the latter have never told them about their own traumatic experiences?
Backed by carefully told personal accounts, this book provides a detailed description of what is commonly known as “survivor’s syndrome” — a state that manifests itself through nightmares, feelings of intense terror and abandonment, a particular type of incurable irritability, recurring memories, and unjustified fears and worries.
Nathalie Zajde is a psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of Paris-VIII. She is the author of Enfants de survivants (1995) and the co-author (with Tobie Nathan et al.) of Psychothérapies (1998).