Not every Holocaust survivor managed to truly survive Hitler's attempt during World War II to wipe out the Jewish People. For those who suffer a severe a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the Holocaust is still in progress, and the victims are still on the run, or hiding.
The Sha'ar Menashe Mental Health Center in Pardes Hanna is one of three facilities in Israel that provide a refuge for those who cannot function on their own in today's world, due to the mental illness that resulted from their trauma of the Holocaust. According to Alexander Grinshpoon, director of the hospital, the 80 men and women who live at Sha'ar Menashe ("Gate of Menashe") have been most severely affected by the PTSD that affects all Holocaust survivors. He quoted research showing that those who survived the Nazi campaign of Jewish genocide have a higher rate of suicide than others.
Many patients are mute, still locked up within themselves and are unresponsive to “outside” attempts at contact. They tremble, chain-smoking cigarettes and avoid any eye contact. The nightmares sometimes visit during the day. Some hoard food in the pillow cases, thinking they cannot be sure of from where or when their next meal will come. Others refuse to shower – it reminds them of the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps.
Approximately 220,000 Holocaust survivors are currently living in the State of Israel, according to the latest figures. Of those, some 200 are hospitalized with severe symptoms in the three mental health centers. Others manage their daily struggle silently -- and some not so silently -- at home and in their respective communities.
“My husband woke up screaming or crying at least two or three times a week, until the end of his days,” Arad resident Nava Z. told Israel National News on Monday, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. Her 80-year-old spouse had seen his mother taken away by the Nazis, surviving and later becoming a renowned researcher in the field of sociology.
The symptoms of PTSD, which often become debilitating, include flashbacks of the traumatic event -- feeling that it is recurring over and over again – as well as nightmares, difficulty concentrating, constant anxiety and hypervigilance.
According to the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma, an estimated nine percent of Israel's population of seven million citizens suffer from PTSD – three times the level of that in the United States and other Western nations. Much of the trauma faced by Israel's population is due to living over the years with the constant threat of attack by surrounding hostile Arab nations, as well as the bloody attacks carried out by Palestinian Authority terrorists from Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Those attempts have resulted in wounded and murdered innocent Israeli civilians through suicide bombings in various cities, rocket and mortar attacks against southern Israeli communities, and firebombings and rock attacks aimed at motorists on the roads.