History, Trauma and Shame: Engaging the Past Through Second Generation Dialogue

History, Trauma and Shame provides an in-depth examination of the sustained dialogue about the past between children of Holocaust survivors and descendants of families whose parents were either directly or indirectly involved in Nazi crimes.

Taking an autobiographical narrative perspective, the chapters in the book explore the intersection of history, trauma and shame, and how change and transformation unfolds over time. The analyses of the encounters described in the book provides a close examination of the process of dialogue among members of The Study Group on Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust (PAKH), exploring how Holocaust trauma lives in the ’everyday’ lives of descendants of survivors. It goes to the heart of the issues at the forefront of contemporary transnational debates about building relationships of trust and reconciliation in societies with a history of genocide and mass political violence.

This book will be great interest for academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of social psychology, Holocaust or genocide studies, cultural studies, reconciliation studies, historical trauma and peacebuilding. It will also appeal to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, as well as upper-level undergraduate students interested in the above areas.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is Professor and holds the South African National Research Foundation Research Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is the author of the award-winning A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness.