Concluding remarks

Summary

In August 1945 UNRRA distributed a report compiled by a team of experts on the psychological problems their field workers were likely to encounter in their dealings with displaced persons. The anticipated response of those who had been exposed to deprivation, extreme danger, suffering and loss was of regression to infantile patterns of behavior characterized by a lack of restraint, neglect of cleanliness, a weakened sense of shame and little patience with tradition and form. The people they were to administer and counsel would often be marked by restlessness, an attenuated sense of communal responsibility, apathy, passivity, a loss of initiative, sullen suspicion of authority and an impaired sense of trust. This process of demoralization combined with an infantile sense of unworthiness – “I was cast out and suffered because I was unworthy” – represented a resounding blow to self-respect that could lead to a generalized hostility to the world without or, when turned inwards, to withdrawal, depression and, in extreme cases, suicidal tendencies. Thus, the primary goal of their work in relief and rehabilitation was to help the displaced persons regain “a sense of value and of purpose, [the] restoration of self-respect and social status.”

These projected responses can easily be identified, singly or together, in the brief history of She'erith Hapleitah but never became its defining feature. Instead, the creation of a community of fate imbued with a sense of purpose was a critical factor in deflecting, mitigating and transmuting the destructive impact of massive psychic trauma.