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Liberation is the act of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression. It is significant to the Holocaust because the oppressed being liberated from the camps was the first and a major step towards regaining their lives. It not only ended the suffering of millions, but also was the first step towards the Jews regaining their lives. When the Jews were freed, they felt like they were left with nothing, and like no one understood them. Most couldn't feel too relieved because they had unlearned how to feel. As for their physical state, many of the survivors didn’t realize they were freed because of how sick and exhausted they were from the harsh conditions. Many children had forgotten what freedom felt like, including Michael Bornstein, as he said in his book, Survivors Club. Many of them suffered because they were isolated and still starving. Psychologically, it took a while for the survivors to detach from the trauma of the Holocaust after liberation, and there are quite a few who still have nightmares about the experiences of the Holocaust.

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I used the source https://www.proquest.com/openview/374ccd300e50eb88740ac2853fa79409/1?cbl=48308&pq-origsite=gscholar , written by Dan Stone, a Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, written in December of 2013. It provides a perspective of the Soviets shortly after the liberation of the Jewish people in Auschwitz, and how they were devoid of emotion. I used this source as it showed the perspective of the liberated people from Auschwitz, and what state they were found after the liberation, and the events that occurred afterwards. I also used the source https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hJ2yBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=holocaust+liberation&ots=QsuHGao5uw&sig=zQxwxMs7l7JoNB56yKinLP6lr4E#v=onepage&q&f=false , also written by Dan Stone, a Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, written in 2015, published by Yale University Press. This book explains the events of the liberation of people in German death camps and the harsh treatment they had to go through shortly after, where they were discriminated against. This source helped me analyze the idea of liberation, as it more deeply explained the stories of specific individuals and the harsh treatment they still faced after liberation. I also used the source https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Jx_AOBjydlEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA33&dq=holocaust+liberation&ots=zEqa2E-Tb9&sig=D0I33VRzDvoJgcFgIuuN8WIThbU#v=onepage&q&f=false , written by Theodore Mark Gottfried, who has published multiple papers on the history of wars, such as the second world war, and graduated in 1966 the John Marshall Law school. The book outlines the events that occurred after the liberation of Jewish people in WW2, and how they still faced harsh treatment. This source was viable for information gathering, as it showed the political struggles and problems the Jewish prisoners had faced, such as being put in dangerous situations or how they were forcibly removed from their residences because of their religion, showing that the racism against them never dissipated. It is important to find these credible resources from people of intellectual backgrounds, as they can provide reliable and accurate information that can help inform others so that they can learn and respect those who died. The sources were found from Google Scholar, and were checked to be created by reliable people, who have a good enough background to teach others.

(shaf)

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My group was Sawyer Z, AJ, Luke, Owen, Yusuf, and Corbin. Our definition of trauma is an emotional response to a terrible situation, like a horrible crime or the loss of a family member. This can be in many forms, such as shock, denial, unpredictable emotions and decisions, and could even be in forms such as PTSD or drug problems. The Holocaust had a major psychological impact on those who experienced it, and they found various ways to cope with the psychological trauma they experienced during the Holocaust and how it affected them afterward. Some of the ways to cope found by Holocaust survivors are typically toughing it out, ignoring it, or talking about their experience with other Jews.  The Holocaust also caused many physical impacts and physical trauma to those who survived it. This is shown in the article “Effects of the Holocaust on the Physical Health of the Offspring of Survivors” where it states, “As adults, those children will suffer from obesity, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, glucose intolerance and diabetes, and have higher rates of cardiovascular morbidity.” The physical effects of the Holocaust caused damage to various parts of the human body due to the brutal conditions faced by the survivors, and how they were starved in the camps. This example, although tested on infants who were in the Holocaust, shows the damage it caused to future generations as well as the adults who endured the Holocaust. There were also many long-term effects of the Holocaust shown by the article “Surviving the Holocaust: A meta-analysis of the long-term sequelae of a genocide.” where the article states “The coexistence of stress-related symptoms and good adaptation in some other areas of functioning may be explained by the unique characteristics of the symptoms of Holocaust survivors, who combine resilience with the use of defensive mechanisms.” Holocaust survivors still have post-traumatic symptoms, but they tend to overcome them by being uniquely resilient. This shows how even today, Holocaust survivors still have issues, although the Holocaust is over.  Some of the narratives and examples of Trauma from the Holocaust are from the diaries of survivors like Anne Frank, who experienced Trauma hiding from the Germans during the Holocaust. There are many other Holocaust survivors who had trauma from the Holocaust, but the general idea of trauma is still there.

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The three sources that I used were the American Psychological Association, Biography.com, and the Royal Air Force Mildenhall. All of these sources provide information on the resilience of the Holocaust survivors. The article written by the American Psychological Association describes the definition of Resilience as successfully adapting to the difficulties that may be faced in life. Some of the coping mechanisms that people used to deal with the nightmares that followed them from the Holocaust are taking risks and acting as a troublemaker. This makes them feel like they have control of their life. The support from others is also a key coping mechanism in recovering from the Holocaust. While the time during the Holocaust was a very dark period, a positive outcome from it was being able to learn from the past mistakes and learning from the experiences of others. After returning from the Holocaust, family members were a big part in helping people recover. Families who are together find strength together and rebuild their lives. From the passages, Biography.com, and the Royal Air Force Mildenhall, talk about the stories of real Holocaust survivors. They talk about being sent to concentration camps and the heartache they experienced from being torn apart from their families. From Biography.com, I learned about the story of Simon Wiesenthal and his journey of being sent to concentration camps. Nearly all of his family died, and he weighed 90 pounds. He was eventually reunited with his wife. The Royal Air Force Mildenhall Talked about Eva's story and how she was born in a concentration camp, and many of her family members died.

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Dom, Liam, Danny, Ally, Paige

The chosen theme was life at camp. Life at camp was not easy and very fatal. After finding key sources and sites to research more about the brutal life at camp, it shows what Jews went through. Life at the camps was horrible, and everything was quite unsanitary. Living conditions were very hard to even endure. Prisoners wore the same baggy clothes the whole time they were there. Sickness spread very easily, and many died from diseases. This would strongly affect mental and physical health. The hard labor physically broke people. Also, the lack of food starved people and caused death. Mentally, people got PTSD after everything they went through. Bathrooms were disgusting, and they would have to use the bathroom in small holes. Also, Jews slept on wood planks with up to 4 people, which meant no sleeping room. Site 1 “Majdenek.eu” states, “The barracks had no sewage system. Until the spring of 1943, they lacked even the most basic sanitation. The lack of water made it impossible for the prisoners to wash themselves or to clean their clothes or underwear. The prisoners were not allowed to keep any cleaning items. Due to the lack of sanitary installations, during the day, completely unshielded sewage pits had to be used as field latrines” This site helped contribute to the understanding of the theme because it showed truly how unsanitary the camps were. Prisoners couldn't even clean themselves, which made sickness spread very easily. Site 2 “auschwitz.org” records, “During the first several months, the prisoners’ rooms had neither beds nor any other furniture. Prisoners slept on straw-stuffed mattresses laid on the floor." This site also contributed to the theme of the living conditions because it adds another reason of why living conditions were so substandard. In the first few months, there weren't even beds to sleep on, which meant prisoners had to sleep on hard floors. We should all remember the Holocaust because of the terrible things Jews and other people had to go through. Nobody could've gone through something quite as bad as the holocaust, so we should never take anything for granted. Remembering the Holocaust is very important because we can learn from the past to not commit these atrocities again.

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Maria, Brooklyn, Milana, Alayna, Adea, Elly

Surviving wasn't an easy task during the Holocaust; millions of people were killed, but there were a lot of different survival strategies that people used to better their chances of living to the end of the war. Different strategies include hiding in the toilets, sewing money into clothes, hiding children in adult bunks, smuggling food, leaving the country, and going into hiding (such as hiding in a non-Jewish household or hiding in a basement, attic, etc.) People would try to trade items for food, sneak food, or get food from workers and share small portions. Some people tried to find spots near the center of a barrack that had some warmth. They would stay quiet in order to avoid unwanted attention from guards, getting a useful job helped gain protection and increased the chance of living longer. Building relationships with one another was really important, and while some people put themselves first, there was a low chance of making it out of the war without help from others. Within the camps, friendship could have been the difference between life and death. The reason a group of women survived from infection was because of a friend urging them to use their own urine as a disinfectant on their own infected, pus-filled wounds on their fingers, which ended up working. Having people to rely on in the camps would help in a lot of serious situations, like the death marches. There were a couple survivors that were bonded with each other and were able to come up with a system where they periodically exchanged places, one out of the group would switch to be the person in the middle so they could catch a few moments of sleep while walking, because the person in the middle would be dragged along by the others and not fall down, resulting in them being able to rest but not be shot by German guards. While friendship was important, you needed a lot more to be able to survive the harsh conditions in concentration camps. Children in Auschwitz would often use their small size to smuggle food, medicine, and supplies from outside. Most of the children only survived because they went into hiding, from changing their identity to physically concealing themselves from the outside world, were all measures to stay safe. When it came to staying alive people's first thought is escape, but that was a very hard option which oftentimes ended in getting killed, but there were small ways of resistance such as a lot of different Judenrats would help people to revolt against Nazi soldiers inside of ghettos. There was also a system of underground workings that would help give out true information and not spread propaganda. The underground workings would help Jewish people with a lot of stuff, such as finding places for them to hide out during the war. There are a lot of different sources that give this information. One of these “Survivors Club”, which is a firsthand account from Michael Bornstein, who is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. The book goes into detail about many different things he and his family had to do to survive, such as his mother smuggling food into the camp and keeping him in the women's barracks. https://mjhnyc.org/blog/the-remarkable-power-of-friendship/ tells the story of a female survivor explaining how she wouldn't have survived without the help of others. She talks about the ways she tried to help keep other girls alive, specifically with the use of her suggestion to use urine as a disinfectant. Encyclopedia.ushmm.org talks about the many different lengths that children had to go in order to survive. It explains many different survival methods they used and how they were effective such as children using a small size to smuggle food and supplies into ghettos and adopting fake identities to avoid being detected by Nazi soldiers. All the different sources really explain the different survival tactics and tell the reader what different survivors had to go through in order to make it out of the war. There was a lot of the Holocaust that is not talked about, survival methods are one of those topics that are not talked about in detail. But with the research from these sources, the reader is clearly able to understand and learn about the different ways people stayed alive. Some of the things that people had to do in order to live were horrific and truly devastating, so learning about that and understanding the lengths people went to really shows others the depth of the Holocaust. Understanding the different methods gives people the ability to have even more respect for Holocaust Survivors.

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The theme liberation explained how people felt during their individual liberation processes. Not only was this a big event for the Jewish people, but also for the liberators who made a lasting impact on humanity. People came together to help people wrongfully imprisoned. When Jewish people were liberated they felt so much joy and relief because they knew that they would not suffer any longer. This made a lasting impact on many people all over the world and it will be remembered forever.

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Mason, Jill, Sammi, Mazen.

Resilience is the adapting or overcoming of a big challenge or adversity, like trauma, tragedy, or stress. Resilience is shown in the sources we found about Holocaust survivors as it gave them a will to survive because of resilience, and it gave them a good outlook at life because of the harsh conditions that they had to go through. Like the Bornstein's story their family members pushed themselves to the limits or in face of danger and breaking rules to keep their family safe, like in the book Survivors Club where Michael's mother hid him under her bed so he was safe even though he wasn't allowed in the women's bunk.

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James, Jaxson, Jacob, Jake, Marko

The theme of Survival Strategies shows the ways that many people survived the Holocaust. It explains the physical ways that people would revolt and fight back against the nazis. Many people would combine arms and fight back against the nazis with weapons. It also explained the mental ways that people would survive by talking about the many creative ways people would avoid death. Many people would create fake visas or attempt to flee the country to avoid persecution. This theme shows the many ways that people would try to survive during the holocaust. In The Survivors Club, Michael and his family use many creative ways to avoid persecution. His father collects money from the rest of the town to keep the rest of the town safe by paying the nazis. Along with that, while in Auschwitz, Michael's mother had to keep him hidden to make sure he wasn't killed.

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Zoe, Brenna, Aven, Liv

When analyzing the theme of traumatic experiences from the Holocaust, examining and choosing the most reliable sources with good backgrounds is crucial to gathering valuable evidence. One of the sources our group used to collect information was Frontiers.org, with an article regarding Holocaust trauma and how it affects developing relationships. The article itself was called “Trauma-informed care approach in developing companion robots: a preliminary observational study.” There were a few reasons why this source was reliable. The first of which is that it was published on March 30th, 2025. Because this article is very recent, it has up-to-date information and holds the newest, most advanced data in regards to emotional trauma research. This article was reviewed by AI, but was also written by humans. One author,  Ryuji Yamazaki Skov, has a Ph.D. According to his bio, it states, “He received a M.A. degree in Philosophy from Chuo University, Tokyo, and a Ph.D. in Knowledge Science from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Ishikawa, in 2004 and 2010.” Currently, he studies clinical philosophy and ethics. This proves him to be a reliable source on this topic. The evidence we found contributed to our understanding of trauma by showing us how past traumatic experiences can affect development in personal relationships. They can also lead to someone living with survivor's guilt. This is when a person feels undeserving or guilty for surviving a deadly event that another did not. The next source we selected was from the site Hogrefe eContent. This article is called “Rorschach Assessment of Holocaust Trauma.” One of the characteristics of this site that makes it a reliable source when evaluating the theme of effects of the Holocaust is that it was published on Apr 15, 2025. Due to this article being newer, it holds more accurate knowledge on how the Holocaust affects people. The article gives many paragraphs of information regarding a study that shows the present-day recurring effects that the Holocaust has on individuals. The information is heavily discussed, and the patterns that could be seen throughout the survivors tested are thoroughly examined. An additional reason why this is a reliable source is that the website itself contains 88 articles about the Holocaust, and this one specifically includes real accounts of survivors in their own words, which could not be fabricated or rephrased. The article consists of, directly from a victim, “In those conditions people lose their heart. It was not as if it didn’t matter if a friend died, but we became like wood.” This citation helped us explore trauma in individuals more intensely and gave us a new perspective on what the survivors of the Holocaust had to, and are still going through, mentally. Because the accounts of real people were included in the article, it gave us a first-hand perspective of what the people went through, and provided the reader with a new mindset for thinking about the Holocaust. The last article that we used to gather information about trauma was from ScienceDirect, in an article called Psychological reactions of Holocaust survivors following the October 7 attack in Israel. In this article, the website explains how following the events of the Holocaust, survivors who were put in a situation in Israel where there was a terrorist attack, survivors who had past trauma from the events in the 1940s, showed higher anxiety levels with anxiety attacks, as well as specific vulnerabilities from old memories. This article contributed to the theme of trauma because it demonstrates how a survivor of past events does not forget things easily. Trauma stays with you and affects your everyday life. The website provided our group with evidence on how the survivors still react when faced with past fears, and provided us with a new insight into how trauma still lives in people today. This article was a reliable source for a few reasons. One attribute is that the article was published in 2025. Because the article was published this year, the authors used the most recent and refreshed information to give the readers a reliable read. Also, the article used statistics, which means that the real numbers shown in the article are not made up. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the text states, “As hypothesized, survivors with high PTSD symptom levels due to the Holocaust demonstrated increased psychological vulnerability to the adversities of October 7 and the ensuing war, depicted by higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and war-related PTSD symptoms.” The statistics shown inform the reader how trauma shows up in post-war situations. Therefore, the reliable sources our team collected are valuable to our understanding of this topic and the representation of relevant information.

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Charlie Cianciola, Cal Daugherty, Michael Belviso, Charlie Zegarac, and Caiden Heiden.

My theme was post-war experiences. The post-war experiences for the Holocaust survivors were both physically and mentally challenging. They had to deal with the trauma of their reality. They had lost their family members, their communities were destroyed, and they felt displaced. Many people lost their families, and this left them with identity struggles. They did not know who they were and where they belonged. All these survivors had to rebuild their lives, they had to find a new place to live. If their house was not already destroyed, hostile neighbors may have occupied it. They had to move to a different country, and they had to find a new house. My sources contributed by giving great examples of the struggles these Holocaust survivors had and how they could have been solved. The source https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/ states, “Life is not always easy, but you have to keep going. You must never lose hope.” This shows that after the war, people were heartbroken, but no matter the situation, these survivors were willing to rebuild a better life for themselves and whoever they had left in their family. The sources include https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/, https://www.psychologytoday.com/, and https://hmd.org.

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The theme chosen was what life was like in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Emotionally, life was horrid during the camps. Seeing the brutality of what the Nazis did truly ruined the Jews mental health. Knowing they could easily be next made them very hopeless. Not only that, but a lot of Jews didn't even know that there was constant genocide and the burning of bodies in the cremators. Psychologically after the Holocaust not just Jews developed PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but Nazis also viewing the violence of the Holocaust would develop PTSD. As physical conditions were brutal and harsh, many didn't make it out alive. The constant labor and starvation would cause people to give up, honestly. Even those who survived the holocaust could barely eat because of how their bodies adapted. These conditions were quite horrid, and many died. Nothing at all was sanitary, and people slept on small wooden planks with up to 4 people. Bathroom breaks were rare, and everyone used the same small bathroom. Some people who were sent to the gas chambers for death tried to hide in disgusting bathrooms that smelled. In general, life in the camp was worse than anything; brutality was difficult, Jews' mental health was ruined from things they saw, and many developed PTSD from the terrible events that took place during the Holocaust. Forced labor affected survivors physically because they started to become very hurt and sick, causing them to become very weak. According to our first source it says that, “The Nazis also pursued a conscious policy of "annihilation through work," under which certain categories of prisoners were literally worked to death.” The Jews were so sick and hurt when working that most of them worked in labor until they died.

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1. Find your theme in the chart.

2. Using the + add the below content:

1. Add group members' names.

2. Copy and paste your response to question 3 of the Class Companion (Prepare a summary of your chosen theme, highlighting key insights and findings from your research.

Explain how each of your sources has contributed to your understanding of the theme and its implications for Holocaust survivors).

3. Include and attach an appropriate illustration that goes along with your chosen theme.