The Impact of World War II on Holocaust survivors and Their Mental Health

The Impact of World War II on Holocaust Survivors and their Mental Health
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The Impact of World War II on Holocaust Survivors and their Mental Health
The world is currently witnessing political instabilities across different regions that have escalated into endless civil wars or armed conflicts with devastating effects on all the parties involved in the wars. The multi-sided civil war in Syria, for instance, threatens spillage to other countries around the world including its neighboring nations that support the different warring factions. The Western countries are cautious in their approach or involvement in the wars and armed conflicts witnessed around the world in countries such as Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Instead, the perceived powerful or influential countries function to contain the warring events and provide amicable solutions towards bringing to an end the highly devastating events. That was, however, not the case in one of the most catastrophic warring events recorded in human history that occurred towards the mid 20th century whose involvement of countries from all the continents of the world coined its famous name; World War II. The Second World War, as it is also known, goes down in the world’s history as one of the most devastating warring events whose destruction went beyond loss of lives to impart untold mental and psychological suffering among both the active participants and the civilians. However, it was the racial cleansing of the Jews by Nazi Germany across the European region that stood out as the most atrocious element of the Second World War. The Holocaust, as it came to be known, accounts for some of the outrageous warring events ever witnessed in the world and whose repercussions are still felt by the survivors of the same seven decades later. The psychological and mental effects of the ordeal faced or rather witnessed by survivors of the Holocaust further go beyond those who were directly exposed to the atrocities to include their subsequent generations. An evaluation of the impact of World War II creates a comprehensive understanding of its effects on the survivors of the holocaust through the lens of mental health.
The Holocaust
World War II is characteristic of key events that took place across the duration of the war from its beginning in 1939 to the year 1945. Among the historical events include the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States and the subsequent ferocious attacks and bombing of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought the world to a standstill. The bombing of Japan by the United States led to the death of over 220,000 people with more fatalities recorded on both sides from the armed conflict preceding the use of the atomic bombs on the former. It is, however, without any form of bias or belittling of the devastating effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing that one finds the event as far much short of the catastrophic and traumatizing experience of the Holocaust. The Holocaust makes for one of the most horrific approaches to war ever designed by human beings that thrived on the Nazi’s ability to dehumanize and exterminate the Jews across the European region. The horrendous events of the systematic elim...