Holocaust Drama - The Zone of Interest, Barbarossa Operation - Goebbels - Der Untermensch

 

                                           

 

- In his post as Commander of Auschwitz, Rudolph was ultimately responsible for the killing of nearly one million Jews and others held in the camp.... In inviting viewers to the perpetrator’s side of the wall, he invites us to reflect on our similarities with these people, to see that we are all capable of such evil....insisting...he was simply following orders.

 

-  The Barbarossa operation was accompanied by an intense propaganda campaign coordinated by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of the Reich.  One of the most notorious pamphlets was Der Untermensch ("The sub-human")

 

The Real-Life Inspiration Behind The Zone of Interest’s Chilling Holocaust Tale
By Armani Syed January 12, 2024

 

The Höss villa in southern Poland is an idyllic two-story building with a garden landscaped to perfection. It is also located in the shadows of Auschwitz, the largest and deadliest concentration camp of the Third Reich. The former house of Nazi Commandant Rudolf Höss, who served as Camp Commandant of Auschwitz from May 1940 to December 1943, shared the home with his wife Hedwig, and their two children. And the building is the locus of the action in Jonathan Glazer’s insidious Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest, his first film in the decade since Under the Skin (2013), and the winner of the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The film, adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name and releasing nationwide in the U.S. on Jan. 12, depicts the domestic bliss of the Höss family, who have built their Eden on genocidal foundations. And it never contrasts this utopia with the victims of the Holocaust on the other side of the wall. Instead, we stay with its perpetrators. The film opens with a family enjoying a lake-side picnic, the sunshine ripe. But in the home setting, we learn that Rudolf (Christian Friedel) is at the forefront of exterminating European Jews. Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), who chillingly dubs herself “Queen of Auschwitz,” runs a strict household that she places above all else—even her husband. The family tries its best to drown out the sounds of screams, cries, and gunshots, but the atrocities taking place beyond the wall are undeniable, and seep in through the cracks....

Instead, we are offered a detailed and frankly mundane insight into their domestic routine; the children play, the husband and wife reminisce about old memories, and Hedwig dolls herself up with lipstick and clothing taken from Jewish women. We come no closer to knowing these perpetrators, yet their lives don’t appear dramatically different from our own.
“Typically we may think of Nazis and people who commit atrocities as monsters and therefore not us, not humans[…] which actually teaches us nothing,” says Glazer. “It leaves us feeling a very safe distance, imagining that none of us are capable of that.” In inviting viewers to the perpetrator’s side of the wall, he invites us to reflect on our similarities with these people, to see that we are all capable of such evil.

By spending time on this side of the wall, we come to see how effortlessly the Höss couple compartmentalize the material success they’ve built on suffering. “They were ordinary people who managed to separate their brains in such a way that that wasn't troubling them,” says Oddy. “They sort of reveled in the nouveau riche lifestyle that they'd carved out for themselves on the back of this and didn't bat an eyelid.”....

In his post as Commander of Auschwitz, Rudolph was ultimately responsible for the killing of nearly one million Jews and others held in the camp. After the war ended, he lived under a false identity before British intelligence tracked him down and arrested him. Rudolph testified in the Nuremberg Trials—a joint tribunal ordered by France, the Soviet Union, the U.K., and the U.S. between 1945 and 1946—before he was tried in Poland and hanged on April 16, 1947 at the site of his crimes.

Rudolph never admitted guilt for his actions, insisting until the end—in a refrain that became hauntingly familiar as the justification of so many other Nazis—that he was simply following orders.... https://time.com/6554425/the-zone-of-interest-true-story/

 

Auschwitz Exhibition @auschwitzxhibit
The Barbarossa operation was accompanied by an intense propaganda campaign coordinated by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of the Reich.
One of the most notorious pamphlets was Der Untermensch ("The sub-human"), published in 1942 by the SS & displayed in @auschwitzxhibit

https://twitter.com/auschwitzxhibit/status/1747000785102159874

 

Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors

The excerpts below are from this website.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.

DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305. Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”

Durlacher, G. L. (1991). De zoektocht [The search]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.
Dutch sociologist Durlacher, a survivor of Birkenau, describes his search for and meetings with another 20 child survivors from this camp. Excerpt: “Misha…looks helplessly at me and admits hesitantly that the period in the camps is wiped out from his brain….With each question regarding the period between December 12, 1942 till May 7, 1945, he admits while feeling embarrassed that he cannot remember anything."

Jaffe, R. (1968). Dissociative phenomena in former concentration camp inmates. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49(2), 310-312.
Case descriptions include amnesia for traumatic events and subsequent twilight states in which events would be relived without conscious awareness. Excerpt: “The dissociative phenomena described here turn out not to be rare, once one is on the look out for them.”

Keilson, H. (1992). Sequential traumatization in children. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Amnesia in Jewish Dutch child survivors for the traumatic separation from their parents.

Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 384-389.
Excerpt: “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little."

Krystal, H., & Danieli, Y. (1994, Fall). Holocaust survivor studies in the context of PTSD. PTSD Research Quarterly, 5(4), 1-5.

Kuch, K., & Cox, B. J. (1992). Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 337-340.
Psychogenic amnesia was found in 3.2% of the totals sample, in 3.8 of the general concentration camp survivors, and in 10% of tattooed survivors of Auschwitz. 17.7% (N=22) of the total sample had received psychotherapy. The tattooed survivors had a higher number of PTSD symptoms overall.

Lagnado, L. M., & Dekel, S. C. (1991). Children of the flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the untold story of the twins of Auschwitz. New York: William and Morrow & Co.
Excerpt: “A few of the twins insisted that they had no memories of Auschwitz whatsoever.”

Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1989). Failed empathy—A central theme in the survivor’s Holocaust experience. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 6(4), 377-400.
Excerpt: “Holocaust survivors remember their experiences through a prism of fragmentation and usually recount them only in fragments.”

Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1993). Knowing and not knowing massive psychic trauma: Forms of traumatic memory. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74, 287-302.
Excerpt: “Erecting barriers against knowing is often the first response to such trauma. Women in Nazi concentration camps dealt with difficult interrogation by the Gestapo by derealization, by asserting ‘I did not go through it. Somebody else went through the experience.’....Unintegrable memories endure as a split-off part, a cleavage in the ego...When the balance is such that the ego cannot deal with the experience, fragmentation occurs....Simply put, therapy with those impacted by trauma involves, in part, the reinstatement of the relationship between event, memory and personality.”

Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto: Bantam Books.
Excerpt: “So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank….It’s almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces….The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child.”

Mazor, A., Ganpel, Y., Enright, R. D., & Ornstein, R. (1990, January). Holocaust survivors: Coping with posttraumatic memories in childhood and 40 years later. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3(1), 11-14.

Modai, I. (1994). Forgetting childhood: A defense mechanism against psychosis in a Holocaust survivor. In T. L. Brink (Ed.), Holocaust survivors’ mental health. New York: Haworth Press.
In a debate about uncovering painful memories of the Holocaust, Modai’s case is of a 58 year old woman who is unable to remember her childhood.

Moskovitz, S., & Krell, R. (1990). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Psychological adaptations to survival. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Services, 27(2), 81-91.
Excerpt: “Whatever the memories, much is repressed as too fearful for recall, or suppressed by well-meaning caretakers wishing the child to forget.”

Musaph, H. (1993). Het post-concentratiekampsyndroom [The post-concentration camp syndrome]. Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch Journal of Mental Health], 28(5), 207-217.
Amnesia exists for certain Holocaust experiences, while other experiences are extremely well remembered.

Niederland, W. G. (1968). Clinical observations on the “survivor syndrome.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 313-315.
Discusses memory disturbances such as amnesia and hypermnesia.

Stein, A. (1994). Hidden children: Forgotten survivors of the Holocaust. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Excerpt: “Over the years I have been trying to re-experience those feelings, but they kept eluding me. I was cut off from most of my memories, and from relieving the anxiety of that time….I remember nothing about the time I spent with those people…not a face, not a voice, not a piece of furniture.”

van Ravesteijn, L. (1976). Gelaagdheid van herinneringen [Layering of memories]. Tijdschrift boor Psychotherapie, 5(1), 195-205.

Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77-87.

Abstract: This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943–1947 and 1984–1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder. Apparently intensity of experiences is not a sufficient safeguard against forgetting."

Wilson, J., Harel, Z., & Kahana, B. (1988). Human adaptation to extreme stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam. New York: Plenum Press.

Yehuda, R., Elkin, A., Binder-Brynes, K., Kahana, B., Southwick, S. M., Schmeidler, J., & Giller, E. R., Jr. (1996, July). Dissociation in aging Holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153(7), 935-940.

Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.
46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.

http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/

Traumatic memory: memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory.

Included are cases involving survivors of childhood abuse, survivors of the Holocaust, and war veterans.

In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.

http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/traumatic-memory/

excerpts:
Bremner, J. D., Krystal, J. H., Charney, D. S., & Southwick, S. M. (1996). Neural mechanisms in dissociative amnesia for childhood abuse: Relevance to the current controversy surrounding the “false memory syndrome.” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 71-82.

....CONCLUSIONS: John Nemiah pointed out several years ago that alterations in memory in the form of dissociative amnesia are an important part of exposure to traumatic stressors, such as childhood abuse. The studies reviewed here show that extreme stress has long-term effects on memory. These findings may provide a model for understanding the mechanisms involved in dissociative amnesia, as well as a rationale for phenomena such as delayed recall of childhood abuse.

....Briere, J., & Conte, J. R. (1993, January). Self-reported amnesia for abuse in adults molested as children. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6(1), 21-31.

....A sample of 450 adult clinical subjects reporting sexual abuse histories were studied regarding their repression of sexual abuse incidents. A total of 267 subjects (59.3%) identified some period in their lives, before age 18, when they had no memory of their abuse. Variables most predictive of abuse-related amnesia were greater current psychological symptoms, molestation at an early age, extended abuse, and variables reflecting especially violent abuse

....Chu, J. A., Frey, L. M., Ganzel, B. L., & Matthews, J. A. (1999, May). Memories of childhood abuse: Dissociation, amnesia, and corroboration. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 156(5), 749-755.

....Childhood abuse, particularly chronic abuse beginning at early ages, is related to the development of high levels of dissociative symptoms including amnesia for abuse memories. This study strongly suggests that psychotherapy usually is not associated with memory recovery and that independent corroboration of recovered memories of abuse is often present.

....DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305.

Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”

....Durlacher, G. L. (1991). De zoektocht [The search]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.

Dutch sociologist Durlacher, a survivor of Birkenau, describes his search for and meetings with another 20 child survivors from this camp. Excerpt: “Misha….looks helplessly at me and admits hesitantly that the period in the camps is wiped out from his brain….With each question regarding the period between December 12, 1942 till May 7, 1945, he admits while feeling embarrassed that he cannot remember anything….Jindra…had to admit that he remembers almost nothing from his years in the camps….From the winter months of 1944 until just before the liberation in April 1945, only two words stayed with him: Dora and Nordhausen

....Elliott, D. M., & Briere, J. (1995, October). Posttraumatic stress associated with delayed recall of sexual abuse: A general population study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8(4), 629-647. (Child Abuse Crisis Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA.)

Abstract: This study examined delayed recall of childhood sexual abuse in a stratified random sample of the general population (N = 505). Of participants who reported a history of sexual abuse, 42% described some period of time when they had less memory of the abuse than they did at the time of data collection. No demographic differences were found between subjects with continuous recall and those who reported delayed recall. However, delayed recall was associated with the use of threats at the time of the abuse.

....Feldman-Summers, S., Pope, K. S. (1994, June). The experience of “forgetting” childhood abuse: A national survey of psychologists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(3), 636-639.


Abstract: A national sample of psychologists were asked whether they had been abused as children and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse. Almost a quarter of the sample (23.9%) reported childhood abuse, and of those, approximately 40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse. The major findings were that (1) both sexual and nonsexual abuse were subject to periods of forgetting; (2) the most frequently reported factor related to recall was being in therapy; (3) approximately one half of those who reported forgetting also reported corroboration of the abuse....


Herman, J. L., & Harvey, M. R. (1997). Adult memories of childhood trauma: a naturalistic clinical study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10(4), 557-571.

Abstract: The clinical evaluations of 77 adult psychiatric outpatients reporting memories of childhood trauma were reviewed. A majority of patients reported some degree of continuous recall. Roughly half (53%) said they had never forgotten the traumatic events. Two smaller groups described a mixture of continuous and delayed recall (17%) or a period of complete amnesia followed by delayed recall (16%).

....Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 384-389.

Excerpt: “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little….For a child survivor today, an even more vexing problem is the intrusion of fragments of memory—most are emotionally powerful and painful but make no sense. They seem to become more frequent with time and are triggered by thousands of subtle or not so subtle events

....Kuch, K., & Cox, B. J. (1992). Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 337-340.

Potential subjects with confirmed or suspected organicity, bipolar or obsessive compulsive disorder were excluded. One group (N=78) had been detained in various concentration camps for greater than 1 month. A second group (N=20) had been detained in Auschwitz and had been tattooed. A third group (N=45) had not been in labor camps, ghettos, or had hidden in the illegal underground. Psychogenic amnesia was found in 3.2% of the totals sample, in 3.8 of the general concentration camp survivors, and in 10% of tattooed survivors of Auschwitz. 17.7% (N=22) of the total sample had received psychotherapy.

....Loftus, E. F., Polonsky, S., & Fullilove, M. T. (1994, March). Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(1), 67-84. (University of Washington, Psychology Department, Seattle, WA.)

Abstract: Women involved in outpatient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the 105 women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, the majority (81%) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned.

....Melchert, T. P. (1996, October). Childhood memory and a history of different forms of abuse. Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 27(5), 438-446. (Texas Tech University, Department of Psychology, Lubbock, TX.)

Abstract: A widespread professional and public controversy has recently emerged regarding recovered memories of child sexual abuse, but the prevalence and nature of these memories have received limited empirical examination. This study (N = 553 nonclinical participants) found that very similar proportions of those with histories of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse reported that they had periods without memory of their abuse (21%, 18%, and 18%, respectively).

....Musaph, H. (1993). Het post-concentratiekampsyndroom [The post-concentration camp syndrome]. Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch Journal of Mental Health], 28(5), 207-217.

Amnesia exists for certain Holocaust experiences, while other experiences are extremely well remembered.

....van der Hart, O., Bolt, H., & van der Kolk, B. A. (2005). Memory fragmentation in dissociative identity disorder. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 6(1), 55-70. (Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.)

Abstract: This study examined the quality of self-reported memories of traumatic experiences in participants with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and compared them with their memories of non-traumatic, but emotionally significant life experiences. Systematic interview data were gathered from 30 DID patients in The Netherlands. All participants reported a history of severe childhood abuse; 93.3% reported some period of amnesia for the index traumatic event, and 33.3% reported periods of amnesia for significant non-traumatic childhood experiences. All participants who had been amnestic for their trauma reported that their memories were initially retrieved in the form of somatosensory flashbacks. This suggests that, like PTSD patients, DID patients at least initially recall their trauma not as a narrative, but as somatosensory re-experiencing.

....Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77-87.

Abstract: This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943–1947 and 1984–1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder.

....Williams, L. M. (1994, December). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women’s memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(6), 1167-1176. (University of New Hampshire, Family Research Lab, Durham, NH.)

Abstract: One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question “Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?” A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse.

....Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.

46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/traumatic-memory/

Questions and Answers Regarding Dissociative Amnesia

" Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma.

Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten.

Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one."

The sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder: a reexamination of the evidence.
" No reason exists to doubt the connection between DID and childhood trauma."


Questions and Answers Regarding Dissociative Amnesia
by Stephanie Dallam RN, MS, FNP

....there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.

....Is dissociation a rare phenomenon?
No. Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. Evidence of this process can be found in the early literature on World War I and World War II.

....Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan, R. (April, 1993). Mental health status of Cambodian refugees ten years after leaving their homes. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 63 (2), 223-231.

Dissociation is also a frequent finding in survivors extreme terror. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated one to three million of a population of seven million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation. Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan selected 50 subjects at random from a list of all refugees (~500) resettled by nonprofit organization between 1983 and 1985. None had any formal education and had lived in the US for a mean of 5 years. 86% met the criteria for PTSD. The mean number of traumatic experiences the refugees endorsed was 14 and "90% reported amnesia for upsetting events."

....Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38 , 384-389.

Krell reported on 22 Holocaust survivors who, as children, hid from the Nazis.
"As children they were encouraged not to tell, but to lead normal lives and forget the past . . ."
"The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little . . ."
"For a child survivor today, an even more vexing problem is the intrusion of fragments of memory - most are emotionally powerful and painful but make no sense. They seem to become more frequent with time and are triggered by thousands of subtle or not so subtle events . . ."

Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto : Bantam Books.

One holocaust survivor, Ava Landy, describes her amnesia:
"So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank....It's almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces . . .
The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child. Even now, whenever anything unpleasant happens to me, I have a mental garbage can in which I can put all the bad stuff and forget it . . . .
I'm still afraid of being hungry. . . . I never leave my house without some food....Again, I don't remember being hungry. I asked my sister and she said that we were hungry. So I must have been! I just don't remember." (p. 188).

What types of traumas result in dissociative amnesia?
A review of 50 studies revealed that amnesia rates tend to increase with severity of trauma and is particularly high in victims of sex crimes....

What is the relation of memory recovery to psychotherapy?
Albach et al. studied 97 adult victims of extreme sexual abuse and a control group of 65 women, matched for age and education who reported on their memories of "ordinary unpleasant childhood experiences." The abuse survivors were broken into two groups. One group had participated in psychotherapy while the other group had not. There was no significant differences in amnesia, memory recovery, or other memory phenomena between the survivors who participated in psychotherapy and those who did not.

...How accurate are recovered memories?
Dalenberg, C. J. (1996). Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse. Journal of Psychiatry & Law,24 (2), 229-75.

Accuracy for Continuous Versus Recovered Memories
Percent with evidence supporting memory
Continuous 75%
Recovered 75%

Conclusion
Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture.
The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten.
Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one. However, recovered memories have a prominence of emotional and sensory-perceptual elements vs. declarative (verbal) elements. They are often fragmentary and incomplete and thus hard to make into coherent story.
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/amnesia.html


The sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder: a reexamination of the evidence.
Gleaves DH.

According to the sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder (DID; formerly, multiple personality disorder), DID is not a valid psychiatric disorder of posttraumatic origin; rather, it is a creation of psychotherapy and the media. Support for the model was recently presented by N.P. Spanos (1994).

In this article, the author reexamines the evidence for the model and concludes that it is based on numerous false assumptions about the psychopathology, assessment, and treatment of DID. Most recent research on the dissociative disorders does not support (and in fact disconfirms) the sociocognitive model, and many inferences drawn from previous research appear unwarranted.

No reason exists to doubt the connection between DID and childhood trauma. Treatment recommendations that follow from the sociocognitive model may be harmful because they involve ignoring the posttraumatic symptomatology of persons with DID.

Psychol Bull. 1994 Jul;116(1):143-65.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8711016

ritual abuse and child abuse newsletter

The latest issue of the SMART newsletter is at: http://ritualabuse.us/2011/02/issue-97-march-2011/

This issue contains information on the Pope and the Vatican, the Vatican and the Holocaust, The Vatican in Wikileaks cables, clergy abuse in the world, the Knights of Columbus, pedophile and porn rings, Jeffs' bigamy case, Fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Author of 'Pedophile's Guide', Salvation Army, CIA experiments, Operation Paperclip, Operation Artichoke, CIA's MK/NAOMI Project, CIA Hypnosis Projects, Guatemala STD Study, the Bush Six, ritual abuse and mind control, DID movie (When the Devil Knocks), child abuse effects and cases, "Frankie and Alice" Halle Berry DID movie, human trafficking and the Ramona case.

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
By ERIC LICHTBLAU Published: November 13, 2010
WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible....
The full report disclosed that the Justice Department found “a smoking gun” in 1997 establishing with “definitive proof” that Switzerland had bought gold from the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But these references are deleted, as are disputes between the Justice and State Departments over Switzerland’s culpability in the months leading up to a major report on the issue.

Another section describes as “a hideous failure” a series of meetings in 2000 that United States officials held with Latvian officials to pressure them to pursue suspected Nazis. That passage is also deleted.
So too are references to macabre but little-known bits of history, including how a director of the O.S.I. kept a piece of scalp that was thought to belong to Dr. Mengele in his desk in hopes that it would help establish whether he was dead.
The chapter on Dr. Mengele, one of the most notorious Nazis to escape prosecution, details the O.S.I.’s elaborate efforts in the mid-1980s to determine whether he had fled to the United States and might still be alive.
It describes how investigators used letters and diaries apparently written by Dr. Mengele in the 1970s, along with German dental records and Munich phone books, to follow his trail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html

Report details U.S. role in hunting, hiding Nazis Eric Lichtblau, New York Times
November 14, 2010 A secret history of the U.S. government's Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades....The Justice Department report, describing what it calls "the government's collaboration with persecutors," says that OSI investigators learned that some of the Nazis "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts....

The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many of the most legally and diplomatically sensitive portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by the New York Times.
The Justice Department said the report, the product of six years of work, was never formally completed and did not represent its official findings. It cited "numerous factual errors and omissions," but declined to say what they were.

More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the OSI, which was merged with another unit this year.
The Justice Department itself sometimes concealed what U.S. officials knew about Nazis in this country, the report found.
In 1980, prosecutors filed a motion that "misstated the facts" in asserting that checks of CIA and FBI records revealed no information on the Nazi past of Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier. In fact, the report said, the Justice Department "knew that Soobzokov had advised the CIA of his SS connection after he arrived in the United States."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/14/MNVI1GBPAN.DTL


The New York Times - Secret Justice Department Report Details How the U.S. Helped Former Nazis - An internal history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation provides gripping new evidence about some of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades. The Justice Department kept the 600-page report secret for the last four years, releasing a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group that sued to force its release. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.
http://documents.nytimes.com/confidential-report-provides-new-evidence-of-notorious-nazi-cases?ref=us#p=1