Samson Munn, M.D.
Munn@csi.com
- Facsimile: 617-327-8259 / Boston Massachusetts U.S.A.
The Austrian Encounter
I am interested in dialogue per se and in the
power of dialogue to do good. I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Although I am a physician, my specialty (radiology) is about as
professionally far from dialogue as one can possibly be in medicine. I have
had no advanced training in dialogue, in psychology, in group dynamics, or
in therapy. However, I have had extensive experience in a particular kind or
application of post-genocide dialogue, one example of which I will describe
here.
Before considering The Austrian Encounter in detail,
it is important to know that there exist a number of innovative dialogues in
relation to the Holocaust. The variations are perhaps theoretically
limitless; indeed, a variety already exist. They may be of therapeutic
intent or explicitly not, be large or small, be mediated through talk or
other modalities (e.g., music, imagery, drama, etc.), be local or
international, aim for reconciliation or forgiveness or disavow them both,
emphasize Christian–Jewish relations or disregard religion in their dynamic,
be intensive and profound or not so deep but differently important, be of
several weeks duration or only of several hours, be composed simply of Jews
and/or of Germans or explicitly of descendants of the victims and of the
victimizers of the Holocaust, comprise just students or not, or meet
recurrently, sporadically, or just once. The people who take part are not
randomly included and their meetings are not simply academic experiments (if
they have any academic connection at all). Rather than being affected,
sanguine or histrionic, they are genuine personal and interpersonal
explorations, mediated in one modality or another. Interestingly, these
post-Holocaust dialogue groups have recently begun to network with each
other.
Only some examples of fine such work are: the U.S. and
German university student groups of Björn Krondorfer and Christian Staffa;
several, local, evening, once monthly Jewish–German Dialogue groups in
Boston; the large, international meetings and seminars created together by
Katherine Klinger (in London) and Christian Staffa (in Berlin); an
international group formed on its own composed of approximately 300 members,
called "One by One"; and a variety of interesting and worthy groups in
Holland (such as one related to the sons and daughters born of Dutch mothers
and Nazi fathers, by rape).
Amidst this diversity is The Austrian Encounter, a
small, international group of thoughtful, motivated people who are
personally related to the Austrian portion of the Holocaust through their
parents’ and grandparents’ victimization, perpetration, or related
involvements. The Austrian Encounter has so far met in Vienna thrice
for intensive dialogues of several days each. The fourth encounter is again
scheduled for Vienna, for five days in Summer 1999.
The background of The Austrian Encounter begins with
another group. In June 1992, a genuine encounter group first met in Germany
composed of sons and daughters of German Nazis (mostly of high rank or
responsibility) meeting with daughters and sons of Holocaust survivors.
Included were the daughter of an S.S. general responsible for the killing of
approximately 750,000 people (who was hanged after post-war trial in Russia)
and the son of perhaps the second most powerful and culpable Nazi in the
entire Reich (who fled to South America, thus escaping trial). That
encounter group was created and facilitated by Dan Bar-On, Ph.D., Professor
of Behavioural Sciences at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. I am
a member of that group, which subsequently named itself To Reflect and
Trust, or TRT. My parents are both Jewish concentration camp
survivors (from Germany and Poland).
TRT was not constructed
intentionally or primarily to be therapeutic, but rather to be more
simply a true encounter. The experience was felt by all to be
worthwhile and/or beneficial in a variety of ways (even if not
therapeutic per se), and so we decided to continue to meet.
TRT’s dialogues are intensive and each lasts approximately four
days. The group has met a total of seven times in three countries
over the past seven years. TRT has been the subject of a
B.B.C. documentary film, three of us (including myself) the subjects
of another B.B.C. film, and two of us (including myself) of a recent
German documentary. In addition, TRT has received much
positive press (and none negative) in Le Monde, in
Süddeutsche Zeitung, and elsewhere. It is beginning to serve as
a model for constructive dialogue in an area of strife or genocide,
with the intention being to address current problems and past
enmities and prejudices, and hopefully to prevent future acts of
hatred or perhaps genocide.
In the midst of the second TRT meeting, April 1993
in Israel, I noted to myself and to the others that my contributions did not
feel to me to be sufficient ethical compensation for the powerfully
positive feeling of being so privileged to be amidst the others in that
special experience. It had occurred to me that it would be of merit to
create other similar encounters between children of survivors and of
perpetrators generally (e.g., in South Africa regarding apartheid),
and I had already said so at public presentations given by TRT. From
some subconscious place the idea of moving toward the creation of another
group percolated upward into consciousness, simultaneously connecting with
long-standing knowledge about Austria’s involvement with the Holocaust.
Austria was annexed by Germany, as opposed to other
countries that were invaded, conquered, and occupied, such as Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Austrians were generally pleased or even
gleeful to be annexed by the Reich. Further, Austrians were subsequently
stunningly successful in rising quickly and effectively within the Reich, to
important positions in infamous settings of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, perhaps related to even more pervasive anti-Semitism in Austria
than in Germany. Finally, since the war, Austria and Austrians have been
particularly effective in denying their Nazi pasts, domestically and
internationally — in convincing themselves and the rest of the world of
their innocence, even their victimization! So, the concept of a similar
encounter group in Austria, a country laden with profound culpability and
with great denial, seemed to me to be particularly appropriate and
especially poignant.
I began work on what would later become The Austrian
Encounter in Boston in the days after having returned from the April
1993 meeting of To Reflect and Trust. The creation process began by
thinking of the group’s structure. My goal was to include thoughtful,
intellectually honest, motivated participants who are able to listen as well
as to speak. I planned to include daughters and sons of Austrian Nazis and
of Austrian victims—men and women approximately equally. Finally, I hoped
that there would be two facilitators, one male and one female, and one
affiliated with each "side" somehow. It was important to me that the
facilitator(s) facilitate but not lead, enhance the flow of discourse when
necessary but not control it, and know enough not to presume that
psycho-pathology inherently exists in the participants. It did not become
clear for some time (perhaps a year and a half) that circumstances would
lead me to facilitate alone.
I expected it to be far more difficult to contact children
of Austrian Nazis than children of Austrian Jewish, Roma, or Sinti victims.
In the end, however, the reverse was true. While it was understandably
difficult to find appropriate participants who were the children of Austrian
Nazis, it proved even more difficult to contact Israeli and Austrian
children of Austrian refugees or especially survivors, whether Jewish, Roma,
or Sinti.
How does one go about finding interested, appropriate
children of Austrian Nazis? Too bad one cannot simply turn to the
"post-Nazi" section of the yellow pages ! I placed an ad in each of
the three largest Austrian newspapers’ major weekly edition. That ad, in
English, asked directly for responses from honestly introspective children
of Austrian Nazis, who wished to take part in an open and non judgmental
encounter with children of Austrian survivors. In the end, the ads led to
two participants and to several other contacts. Another successful
connection was made for me directly to a child of an Austrian Nazi from a
German member of TRT, for which I am very grateful. That was the only
contact made easily in the two-year process of finding and screening
participants.
Also, I wrote about two dozen initial letters to therapists
who had attended a recent European conference on psychological trauma from
the Holocaust. Dr. Bar-On and others gave a few names to me, and he and
still others also tried to find Israelis who might take part. All of those
avenues led to more and more people, mostly unproductively. Sufficient
success was ultimately achieved through hundreds of letters, scores of
faxes, dozens of phone calls, several internet bulletin board listings, and
even an interview on Vienna’s Blue Danube Radio!
All the participants were screened by me, sometimes for
several hours. Three visits to Vienna were required in the year before the
encounter in order to organize the participants, to prepare for the group,
and conscientiously to try to meet with each participant. All agreed easily
upon simple, historical truths: that the Holocaust had indeed occurred, that
it was perpetrated primarily by German and Austrians Nazis (but also by
their collaborators in many countries), that the victims were primarily and
especially Jews (but also homosexuals and other targeted groups,
particularly Roma), that millions of Jews (and others too) were killed and
many more hurt in a variety of heinous ways, and that the Holocaust was
ethically and socially, wholly indefensible.
Among the participants at the initial encounter, there were
no children of concentration camp survivors, no Roma or Sinti, no Israelis,
and no contemporaneously Austrian Jews. Despite repeated efforts to derive
such participants, through a great variety of avenues, over greater than two
years, none attended. (Those were acknowledged shortcomings of the first
Austrian encounter.)
The initial Jewish members of this group were children of
Austrians who had escaped the remainder of the Holocaust there by being
forced to flee and by fleeing successfully. Unfortunately, the organized,
Viennese Jewish community was not at all helpful in any aspect of The
Austrian Encounter.
Three Roma and one Sinti did agree to participate in the
first encounter in two pairs at different times, but in the end withdrew, at
least two in fear of bombing by neo-Nazis, etc. Although we went so far as
to keep the location of our meeting secret from even the participants until
one hour prior to the meeting, that measure was certainly no guarantee of
security. Their fear was understandable since, earlier in 1995, four Roma
were killed in a single bombing outside Vienna. (Between that bombing and
our encounter, there were several other racist attacks in Austria, two of
which were against Roma.)
The Austrian Encounter first
met July 1–4, 1995. There were ten participants, two translators,
and myself. The participants were five women and five men, six
children of Austrian Nazis and four of Austrian victims. The overall
age range of the participants was 31–61; the average age (46) was
similar on both "sides" but the age range was a bit wider on the
"side" of children of perpetrators; I was 43. The offspring of
perpetrators were five male and one female (one from Germany, three
from Vienna, and two from elsewhere in Austria); their fathers were
mostly of moderate rank or responsibility. The descendants of
victims were all female (one from Canada, two from the U.S., and one
from England, but having lived in Austria for 14 years at that
point). In addition, there was one couple in the group, composed of
one member from each "side".
We sat in a circle. At our center was only a low table upon
which was placed a small tape recorder and a tiny microphone. The
participants were a 36 year old pediatrician and psychiatrist still in
training, the son of an illegal Nazi party member; a 59 year old highly
ranked judge, the son of a prominent Austrian Nazi journalist and
propagandist; a 39 year old English teacher, the daughter of Viennese Jewish
refugees; a 31 year old who finished schooling (Magister in
psychology) in the days prior to the encounter, the daughter of an SS man; a
50 year old dealer of antique books, the son of an SS man; a 47 year old
social worker, the daughter of Jews who fled Vienna in December 1938; a 46
year old psychologist, the son of a German army officer and Nazi party
member; a 61 year old pensioner and former travel agent, whose father was
first a manager in a Reich airplane manufacturing plant in Austria and later
became chief of the Reich’s film repository and production center for all of
Austria; a 45 year old American adoption educator, the daughter of a Jewish
woman who fled Austria in September 1938; and, a 52 year old writer, the
daughter of Viennese Jews who fled in September 1938 and February 1939.
The first day initially dealt painstakingly for hours with
logistical details. Introductions could not begin until after we had decided
many recording issues, because I had given my commitment to do so to one
very thoughtful participant who had well-reasoned reservations about
privacy. That led to discussion about the translators.
The group genuinely decided (and still decides) its issues
itself; I scrupulously avoided biasing the outcomes of group
decision-making. In the end, the entire encounter was sound-recorded and
both translators were retained. Introductions occurred later in the first
day and were mostly completed that day. They were generally factual,
logical, and reasonably calm, but personally historical. There was some time
even the first day to move beyond introductions in our discussion. Still,
the first day remained generally very collected. However, the last comment
of the first day was emotional and angry, from a daughter of an Austrian
victim, and had to do with her level of trust within the group. She asked
pointedly whether we each trusted our parents to have had our best interests
at heart when they made decisions that might directly or indirectly have had
an influence upon us.
The next morning, the children of victims all answered
"yes." Most of the children of perpetrators replied "no." It was an
important transition. The participants were beginning to trust each other a
bit and perhaps to like each other, too. That day was definitely less
factual and collected; it was more loose, and began to become more, and more
frequently, emotional. There were also amazing questions and comments from
several participants; for instance, the son of a Nazi lamented with regret,
desperation, anger, pain, and great power in his voice: "I never had the
strength to say to my father at the dinner table: ‘Were you a murderer,
Daddy?’!!"
The third day was almost entirely emotional! It lasted until
10:30 at night, with no dinner break. It was highly personal and utterly
amazing! Discussion and emotions became very revealing. For instance, one
person who was repeatedly sexually molested by a Nazi father, and who had
determined definitely not to share that with this group, decided to break
that promise and to do so. That participant could not manage to do so with
words but still wished to communicate it! So, not making clear what was
about to happen, the person instead mostly silently enacted on the floor a
typical scene of such sexual molestation. All the rest of us remained
completely silent, in awe. I had suspected that some such expression was
coming for two days, but no one else had even known of that participant’s
past, and thus could not possibly know what was happening! I watched as
several minutes later, one person’s face revealed dawning realization of the
substance of this communication, and then a few minutes later another’s face
did the same. Thus, a wave of acknowledgement flowed around and through us.
Deeply moved, we all lowered ourselves to the floor rather
than remain above (the father’s position). For three days afterward, that
participant’s central concepts of and reactions to this meeting, the
members, and the revelations that arose, were changed markedly positively.
That participant felt and became energized and happier, and remains (a few
years later) glad to have broken through the barrier and to have shared with
us.
We did minimally approach the relationship between abuse and
that participant’s deceased father’s Nazi past, etc., but there remained
much more for the group to discuss about abuse generally and about sexual
matters in particular. Despite the gravity and emotionality of the described
re-enactment, there were other deep and very moving moments that day, too.
The final day included some more emotional perspectives, but
began to turn toward our closing, toward organization of a future meeting,
and toward other logistical matters. We planned to meet again, perhaps in a
year, probably again in Vienna. We chose one person in each continent to act
as liaison. We decided to add more participants. I reminded the others that
when and where we meet again, whether we need translator(s) or
facilitator(s), whom they should be, etc., were all their decisions.
Many themes were addressed during those four days, in
varying emotional and intellectual depths. All were raised by the
participants themselves. Some were perceived bilaterally symmetrically: a
contemporaneous cognizance of marginalization during childhood, the
importance of ethics in our lives and work, a lack of independence from the
Holocaust in adult life, and altered trust in personal and professional
relationships.
However, importantly and interestingly, many threads ran
through both subgoups but differently so. Examples included hurt or damaged
roots in some sons and daughters of Austrian Nazis versus absent roots in
some of both "sides", warmth versus coldness in our childhood families,
generalized fear or anxiety (to some extent) throughout life for some
children of victims versus childhood terror from the father in the families
of Austrian Nazis, and the relationships between shame and secrets for
children of Nazis versus between protection and secrets for the children of
victims.
Two themes that seemed to relate to the children of victims
alone were that despite feeling "as though they live on a packed suitcase",
they nonetheless are very active and visible in community activities
(fighting racism, etc.); and, that they generally empathize with other
victims, including with the sons and daughters of Nazis in their roles as
victims of their own fathers!
It was stunning and wonderful for these people to have
approached so many important issues, so earnestly, in such short time.
Certainly, they are bright, incisive, motivated, imaginative people. Over
the next 2–3 days there were a few social gatherings of various combinations
of us, and two carefully conducted newspaper interviews. All of that went
well. Warmth had grown from trust, which developed similarly in this
encounter to To Reflect and Trust’s first encounter.
Despite the definite overall success, there were weak
aspects. Four days was too short. We took as long as half a day or more
simply to address logistics because we had not yet developed some trust
between us; on the other hand, working through those matters in a careful,
detailed, and respectful manner created the foundation for such trust. Also,
there was insufficient time to delve deeply into many of the issues and
questions broached. On the other hand, these busy, accomplished people would
likely not have been enthusiastic to attend a longer meeting given the
exigencies of daily life.
However, if these people had known each other a bit more
beforehand (as had been the case for the children of perpetrators and for
some of the children of victims in To Reflect and Trust), they might
have been able to consider themes more deeply in less time, because they
would already have become comfortable with and trusting of each other. In
that way, the first meeting served as a foundation for the subsequent ones.
We had come to trust that each other was for the most part conscientious,
respectable, knowledgeable, and concerned.
Fortunately, no one had an untoward psychological reaction
to the encounter, during it or afterward. Indeed most participants described
it as psychologically very positive and eye-opening, and found it worthy or
beneficial in other ways, too.
During the period after the first encounter, those living in
Austria met several evenings socially, usually at a pub or restaurant. In
those meetings, they discussed some of the subjects raised during the
encounter, related and expanded themes, and the upcoming encounter. They
decided that they would prefer the next meeting to be after a hiatus of two
years (not one), that the two translators should be invited back as
participants (but not as translators), that I should be invited back as a
participant (but not as facilitator), and that there should be no
facilitator (despite several offers and varied options).
Most of those participants living in North America also met
several times during the interval, mostly socially. We generally acceded to
the wishes and decisions of the Austrian participants as they evolved,
although sometimes with hesitation, with disagreement, or with pessimism.
Between the first and second encounters, one of the
participants published a collection of interviews she conducted with
Austrian-Jewish, refugee couples who settled in Los Angeles, one of whom was
her parents. The second Vienna meeting was preceded the night before by an
author’s book-reading, held at Urania, a large and very well-known
center for adult education and film in Vienna. Poignantly, Urania
had long been a cultural center and had been frequented by the author’s father
during his childhood and remembered fondly by him.
The second meeting took place June 13–15, 1997. In all,
there were twelve participants. Eight of the twelve were women and four men.
Of each gender, half were new. Neither of the translators could attend.
I attended, but began the meeting by voicing neutrally an
acknowledgment of my clear transition thereafter to participant. However, by
mid-morning, it was clear that I was still being expected to make logistical
decisions and to provide facilitative commentary. By mid-day, it was
realistically determined by explicit consensus that I was indeed still
facilitator and that that was what the group wanted.
As before, we sat in a circle, spontaneously and randomly.
We met the first day in a private room at a well-known, old Viennese coffee
shop. The other two days we met at the Literaturhaus. As at the first
encounter, we recorded the proceedings on audio tape.
The six participants who had also attended the first
encounter were the pediatrician/psychiatrist; the highly ranked judge; the
33 year old who had received her Magister; the social worker; the
writer; and, myself, then 45 years old.
The six new participants were a 28 year old Austrian
student, Jewish, whose Polish Jewish father survived Mauthausen and
subsequently married an Austrian Christian (who converted to Judaism); a 26
year old Austrian historian and student, whose maternal grandparents lived
very near Mauthausen, whose grandfather was in the Wehrmacht, and whose
great uncle was a "fanatic" Nazi in the S.S. in Poland; a 52 year old
American college art history professor, whose parents escaped Austria to
Shanghai in ‘38, who was born in Shanghai but who lived in Vienna ages 2–6
(after the war), all four of whose grandparents were killed by the Reich; a
41 year old Austrian teacher and creator of interactive exhibits, whose
father was a member of the Nazi party and who was an industrial opportunist;
a 50 year old Israeli musician of world-class stature (whose Israeli parents
were not Holocaust survivors), then living in Austria for approximately
seven years, who previously had lived in Germany for twenty-seven years, who
married a German, non Jewish woman, and is raising their daughter
atheistically in Vienna; and, an Austrian woman in her thirties, with a
strong family history of culpable Nazism and anti-Semitism.
The meeting was conducted two-thirds (or more) in German. In
the awful heat of our first day, we met from 9 AM until 10 PM (with breaks).
The day was filled primarily with long and very personal introductions. A
seed of trust was palpably present, presumably because half the participants
had already known each other. A bit more fully developed trust was already
present upon arrival the second day, based simply on the revelations of the
first day and their percolation through our souls and dreams. That increase
in trust accelerated during the early-mid portion of the second day, and
remained sustained.
It was during the second and third days that we more freely,
deeply, and variably discussed topics of interest to us. Some themes
addressed were "belonging" socially vs. belongings (issues of loss, worth,
property ownership, etc.), the ethics of making use of social "connections"
during the Holocaust and now, anger, what real friendship is and entails
(e.g. "Does a good friend reveal to a Jewish friend anti-Semitic remarks
that a mutual acquaintance has made?"), the narrow-mindedness and
intolerance of the organized Viennese Jewish community currently toward non
orthodox or even non observant Jews, that secular Jews seem to represent a
perceived "threat" to the "security" of the official (and ostensibly
observant) Jewish community in Vienna, where "home" really is and where one
can feel "at home", fear of neo-Nazis for participation in The Austrian
Encounter
or for other endeavors, fears more generally, and individuation from our
parents (i.e., finding a truly independent path in life).
Beginning during the second day, the group also considered
the next (third) Austrian Encounter. It was decided that it could be
in Vienna or in the U.S. (leaning slightly toward Vienna again), that the
peak number that we would allow ourselves to reach was fourteen (so as not
materially to change the dynamic), that if we were to add new participants
they should come preferentially from among those in the first encounter who
hadn’t attended the second, that we should definitely meet the next time for
five days, that the next meeting should be after no more than one year, that
we should continue to meet without a formal translator, and that I should
remain facilitator. Those two days’ discussions did not run so late into the
evenings, although afterward many remained together socially.
During our two hours or so of closure, all twelve of us
acknowledged that the experience had been wonderful and remarkable.
Additional descriptors that came up often were "fabulous", "compelling",
"once-in-a-lifetime", and "energizing". It was poignantly pointed out by
several that non Jewish Austrians and Jews could be at the same Viennese
coffee shops, even at the same table, for thirty years without experiencing
the dialogue they had all come to know in just these three days!
One participant wrote afterward, "My last night (four days
after the group ended), nine of the twelve went out to dinner together."
Bernd "commented that night that we were all one big happy family. We
enjoyed really sharing our struggles, but also enjoyed laughing and joking
together, and like each other as individuals."
Based upon growing trust and the reciprocal sharing of
personal histories, participants felt "energized" to talk more, to socialize
very actively, and to begin a variety of projects individually and in
smaller groups, etc. Examples included the creation of a formal site for the
collection of formerly Jewish property in the hands of non Jewish Austrian
families, the donation of one participant’s collection of his father’s
propagandistic publications and other writings to the archive in Vienna, and
the performance of public concert (by a trio composed of the professional
musician and Jewish participant; an amateur musician and non Jewish member;
and, the victim-father of third participant).
In considering The Austrian Encounter, parallels to
the first meeting of TRT come to mind. It was not until the second
Austrian encounter that half the participants had already come to know each
other, while the other half was new. (That mix occurred at the first meeting
of To Reflect and Trust.) Trust grew in a parallel fashion, and
finally the creation of apparent energy.
On the other hand, that most of the dialogue of the second
meeting was in German likely made an important difference in experience from
TRT
and from our first encounter. I suspect that it lowered the stress level of
some of the native Austrians; it may be that these participants operate
daily, especially in regard to their feelings and opinions regarding the
Holocaust, at a prominent stress level in ambient Austrian society. I also
suspect that it elevated the stress of some who came from America; as Jews,
simply having been in Austria may have raised their stress levels a bit, and
having struggled to understand and to be understood in German was likewise
stressful. Finally and importantly, there are underlying widely historical,
personal family historical, and contemporary psychological connections to
the facts that the Holocaust was effected primarily in spoken and in written
German, primarily by Germans and Austrians, etc. For all these reasons, I
suspect that meeting in Austria and primarily in German served very
poignantly to highlight awareness and to stimulate psyches for us all, and
perhaps a bit to balance Holocaust-related inner stresses between our two
"sides."
The day after the meeting ended, interviews were conducted
and recorded on audio tape with two of the participants who volunteered, one
from each "side" (both female), and with me. The interviews were done by a
German journalist, Silvia Pfeifer, for an English radio program on
Deutsche Welle, broadcast only a few days later. Also, another radio
interview was given by two of the participants, that time for an Austrian
program, in German.
A day or two later, I met for 2-3 hours over coffee one
night with two Viennese therapists (one Jewish and one not), at their
request. Interestingly, they had optimistically decided approximately six
weeks earlier to create a therapy group in early July comprising sons and
daughters of both "sides" of the Austrian component of the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, their hopes were dashed when they succeeded in enlisting only
one possible participant in response to the newspaper announcement that they
had placed. The evening’s discussion supported all our perceptions that
creating such a group is especially difficult in Austria.
The Austrian Encounter
reconvened in Vienna, June 18-22, 1998, for our third meeting. All
twelve previously committed did indeed take part, plus one child of
a Nazi who had attended the first but missed the second encounter.
However, soon after starting, two women dropped out over an issue of
trust within the group: one woman (a daughter of a victim) accused a
son of a Nazi of having made a sexually abusive phone call to her a
couple of weeks earlier. After brief discussion in the group
setting, she dropped out (by her own choice and contrary to the
overall sentiment of the group) and a daughter of a Nazi also did so
in support of her. (Another participant, also a daughter of a Nazi,
dropped out for a time, but returned thereafter.) Thus, most of the
meeting was attended by eleven participants, six women (half from
each "side") and five men (three the sons of victims).
This intra-group trauma immediately raised two other issues
of trust between a pair of male participants (one from each "side"), and
those matters were successfully worked through in the group. All of these
challenges led to discussions about issues of trust within the group
(between people in general, between people and the courts, etc.), of silence
(perceived and real) and of communication, of continued dialogue when it is
especially difficult, and of a perceived improvement in consciousness in
Austria regarding its awful involvements in the Holocaust. On the
other hand, the group has so far continued to avoid discussion of the
importance and variety of sexual abuse under the Reich.
The Austrian Encounter was
profoundly existentially challenged by the matter of the abusive
phone call. Although the issue itself remains unresolved, the group
survived its first truly major trauma and learned from the
experience. In the end, even though personal trust between the
involved three women and the man sadly remained gone, group trust
was generally improved by having worked through the shock and by
having moved forward thereafter. All eleven (plus one woman at the
original meeting who did not attend subsequently) have committed to
attend the fourth Encounter, scheduled for the summer of
1999, again in Vienna.
In conclusion, there certainly has been and continues to be
sterling success in The Austrian Encounter; amazingly, a group
composed mostly of sons & daughters of Austrian Nazis and of daughters &
sons of Austrian Holocaust victims has met, and in Austria! For these people
simply to have met, to have been honest and earnest with each other, and to
have done so several times intensively, were and remain remarkable and
unique in Austria!
Although Austria harbors terrible enmity of Jews, retains a
history and a legacy of heinous responsibility during the Reich, and
mastered denial of that culpability after the war, we continue to see deep
openness lead to warmth, trust, and the beginnings of much more by
wonderful, varied, motivated people, despite personal differences and
despite their origins from opposite sides of a major world trauma (and the
greatest trauma in Jewish and in European histories).
Robert S. Wistrich, the Neuberger Professor of Modern
European and Jewish History at Hebrew University (Jerusalem) wrote in a very
recent report, "There is now, for the first time in post-war Austria, a
serious commitment to fighting racism and anti-Semitism" and "…there is even
the beginning of a movement to discuss the Holocaust critically and openly …
and to seek to learn its lessons." How intensive post-trauma dialogue might
be of potential benefit after other holocausts, both contemporaneously and
in the prevention of future or repeated genocidal acts, is a matter that is
barely beginning to be explored11, and one which I hope will be
examined in greater depth and in more varied settings soon.
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