Engagement in Families of Holocaust Survivors.

A questionnaire study of 80 young adult children of Holocaust survivors and 138 children of “American” families matched for age, sex, education and socioeconomic status corroborated the hypothesis that members of survivor families are more closely engaged than are members of “American” families: attachments are tighter, and separations are effected with greater difficulty. Children of survivors more frequently describe themselves as protective of their parents. Significant differences between the two populations were found to be consistent with the descriptions in the largely anecdotal literature on Holocaust survivors regarding the structure of survivor families.