Echoes Of War: Great-grandchildren Of Veterans Paying The Price For Their Unlived Grief

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Until recently, it was believed that the closer a person is to the events of the Great Patriotic War, the harder it is for his psyche. Today, systemic family psychologists say that the generation of 25-year-olds and younger - that is, the great-grandchildren of the winners - got a more unbearable burden than even their parents, who were born in the 60s and 70s of the last century. What encrypted messages did our ancestors convey to us over the decades, and how did this affect our lives?

“If we compare compatriots from the former USSR, the third and fourth generations after the participants of the Great Patriotic War, then we can say that they still carry a tragedy that was not comprehended in time, experienced and passed on to descendants as a revised experience,” says the systemic family psychotherapist Natalia Olifirovich. - Look at the faces of people in the post-Soviet space, especially in the morning. They are gloomy, dull, gray, as if there is no reason for joy. Compare them with the faces of residents of other countries - participants in the Second World War. Our country - I mean the entire territory of the former USSR - won. It would seem, why not rejoice?"

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Because our country is still in mourning, despite the past seven decades, the psychotherapist is convinced. Our grief has not yet been “burned out”. After the war, there was no time to grieve and heal wounds - it was necessary to restore the destroyed economy. And speaking out loud about what did not fit into the picture of a triumphant victory was life-threatening.

The soldiers returning from the front could not share their experiences even with loved ones: some were not allowed - it was a state secret, someone simply displaced terrible shots from memory, someone was afraid to speak out loud, because even the walls then had ears. About the fellow soldiers killed in front of our eyes, about hunger, unbearable ordeals, animal fear and the daily choice “either they will kill me or I will kill first” - all this had to be kept silent. About how friends who were first captured disappeared in the camps, how the soldiers often behaved cruelly when they found themselves in foreign territories: now there are many declassified documents about the reverse side of the war. But a huge amount of material is still kept classified as classified. And there are fewer and fewer living witnesses of those events who could tell the truth. But even those who are alive do not want to share it.

When the historical experience of the family is impossible to survive and digest, descendants begin to kill themselves, sometimes literally

“War is grief in all respects and fronts. Not only in the literal sense, - says Natalya Olifirovich. - Everyone, without exception, got into the meat grinder: both the civilian population, and those who fought, and those who worked in the rear. It is not customary to talk about how families broke up because of front-line love; how women died, and the new wives of the returning front-line soldiers did not accept their children from their first marriages and sent them to orphanages; how people ate in besieged Leningrad; how the soldiers and officers behaved in the occupied territories; how women at the front became pregnant and either had abortions or were forced to leave their children.

The cost of this war turned out to be very high. Everyone who survived or did not survive the war had something unspoken, which was "encapsulated" and passed on to the next generations. Often these are feelings of guilt, shame, horror, pain, melancholy, hopelessness, despair. Almost everyone who went through the war in one capacity or another has a so-called survivor complex: both joy that he survived and guilt that another died. These people seemed to be hanging between two worlds - life and death, the ghosts of the past are always with them.

“Guilt and shame means there is a lot of suppressed and unexpressed aggression. As a result, it is impossible to rejoice and build a new life. And this is passed on to the next generations. How does it manifest? Someone migrates farther, someone begins to behave destructively or show autoaggression - hence different addictions, inflicting wounds on oneself: the same tattoos, piercings are a manifestation of autoaggression,”Natalya Olifirovich is convinced. Young people, far from the subculture, are increasingly using crosses, skulls and flowers for tattoos …

When the historical experience of the family is impossible to survive and digest, descendants begin to kill themselves, sometimes literally. Often times, the story is truncated or distorted. For example, we tell the children a myth: that the great-grandfather was brave, did not lose heart, heroically went through the whole war. And we are silent about the fact that he experienced fear, deprivation, despair, cried and killed. Sometimes the story is not transmitted at all, becoming a family secret. Either we call children by the names of their ancestors, involuntarily or consciously dooming them to the same fate.

Symptom of unclear origin

Much of what happened during the war was taboo. But if we cannot tell about some experience directly, we still transmit it - non-verbally. "And then it becomes affectively colored, but without details - and the next generations finish building the plot, fill in the voids, speculate."

As systemic family psychologists say, by the fourth generation, unstructured, non-verbalized, non-symbolized experiences become a symptom that the great-grandchildren of the winners carry in their bodies. Quite often the third generation - the grandchildren of the front-line soldiers - show unexplained anxieties and illnesses. The first generation is an unlived experience. In the second - the diffusion of identity, in the third - the pathology of the emotional sphere, up to borderline states. The fourth receives symptoms that doctors often do not undertake to treat - they are sent to psychologists. “German colleagues came to us, and they cited other data: that psychological trauma“fonites”for six generations, and only in the seventh generation the ancestors“calm down”,” the psychotherapist shares.

One of Natalia's clients, an 18-year-old boy, suffered from suffocation. Attacks became more frequent by the May holidays. They thought they had asthma, took them to doctors, sinned on allergies. "I asked if there was anything in their family connected with suffocation?" - recalls Natalia. The boy's mother went to her mother with questions. It turned out that the boy's great-grandfather had fought. And it so happened that one day, by order of a senior in rank, he had to hang innocent young guys - 16-17-year-olds - for some minor offense. He was very sorry that he was forced to do this, and he remembered this all his life, especially in the days of the Victory celebrations. When the client learned this story, his seizures stopped.

A systemic family psychologist will lead a thread into the past, and most likely there will be something related to food or lack of it.

Another client, born in 1975, came in with an unexplained workaholism problem. She worked so hard that she ended up in the hospital more than once. In the story slipped phrases: "I seem to work for ten", "I don't need it for myself." We began to research family history. The grandmother refused to tell what happened many years ago. The mother of the young woman told. The truth was terrifying. Both the client herself and her mother and grandmother were Jewish, which was very carefully hidden from everyone, including the granddaughter. The client's grandmother is the only one who survived after the execution of the whole family by the Nazis in Kiev at Babi Yar. The girl, despite the risk of being killed, was hidden by the neighbors. She ran to the pits and looked for relatives and all her life she remembered how the earth moved and groaned, with which thousands of shot bodies fell asleep. This shocked and frightened her so much that, having matured, she moved away from Kiev, married a Russian and “buried” her origin forever. And the granddaughter? She lives for all the victims, "works for ten." When the secret was revealed, the woman received the long-awaited relief.

Another client of Natalia - a young man of 27 years old - for some time now began to choke. Despite treatment and even surgery, the attacks did not stop. When they began to understand the history of the family, it turned out that during the war, the man's great-grandfather was a Belarusian partisan. In the occupied village, his wife's sister stayed in the house with her and his children. The policemen told her to tell her as soon as a relative came from the forest, otherwise they would kill her. “My great-grandfather was shot and killed while he was holding his two-year-old son - my client's grandfather. He was gurgling with blood, gasping for breath, they managed to grab the child from the arms of his dying father. The boy, who by that time knew how to say something, was silent for a long time. This is how, in the form of suffocation, the horror that the family had never talked about passed on to the fourth generation.

The reasons for today's problems of descendants may be hiding in a great-grandfather's medallion, or in a mother's song, or in old photographs.

Another client brought her 11-year-old daughter with anorexia. “Anorexia usually appears during adolescence. And I was surprised by her such an early start. I asked the question: is there anyone in the family who was dying of hunger? It turned out that an 11-year-old girl died because of this in her family during the war, and no one ever talked about it. Gluttony and anorexia are now literally an epidemic of these disorders. A systemic family psychologist will certainly lead a thread into the past, and most likely there will be something related to food or lack of it. Sometimes the events of the past become a curse for the family.

“I was told in the group a case when a man returned from the front. His wife was shot by the Germans, and his 12-year-old daughter remained. And the new wife refused to accept the girl - she ordered to send her anywhere. How they got rid of the girl is unknown. But suddenly, at the age of 12, the daughter of his new wife dies. Subsequent pregnancies end in miscarriages, those children who were born conflict, leave home. " This is how the pain once inflicted can "take revenge".

When history gapes with voids, a lot of the energy of the whole family and even those who are far from the root causes go into these black holes. Therefore, it is so important to seek, ask those who still have at least some information. Even if the hypotheses seem crazy at first. But the causes of today's problems for descendants may be hidden in a memorable great-grandfather's medallion, or in a mother's song, or in old photos in a family album, or a secret that everyone is silent about, but it breaks through decades in strange behavior or diseases of Generation Z.

Repent and move on

“We need objects of identification, clear messages without" gaps "and" lacunae "from the ancestors. As a rule, our identity loses its stability in moments of crises. And if we have a healthy basis, normal family support, we can cope more easily. When there is nothing to cling to and rely on, people still look for support - for example, in a church. But sometimes they start to engage in self-destruction,”says Natalya Olifirovich.

We can create such a support, such a "solid foundation" for our children, if we tell them, without embellishment and cuts, what really happened. For example, about how his great-grandfather came from the war, how he regretted that he had to kill people. That he was forced to do this because he defended his homeland and loved ones. Not only about triumph and victory, but also about pain, sorrow, loss, anger, despair …

But you need to reveal secrets carefully and on time. There is another extreme, when eerie details are told in all the details that the child's psyche cannot digest. And you can injure a child no less than not saying something.

Another extreme is heightened, cheerful celebration, exaggerated and lacquered stories that turn a good ritual - a day of remembrance for all the victims and losses of the war - into an emasculated ritualism, where nothing is left alive …

Joint repentance will help not only to accept and endure pain, but also to stop the tragic baton between generations.

“If we want a healthy generation, we must ensure clear intergenerational transmission of information,” says the therapist. To come to terms with a tragic story, we need to go through pain together. In a symbolic sense. Mourn, discuss with other relatives. We can talk to the front-line great-grandfather, if he is still alive, or go to his grave, if he has already left us, and say:

“I know how much grief you have had to endure. I know it was not easy for you to make decisions. Our country is responsible for the blood of people, violence, the destruction of many people, including our compatriots. We did not ignite this war. But we have done many things that have led to tragedy and suffering for individuals. We acknowledge this. And we are very sorry."

Such joint repentance, honest recognition of everything that happened, consent and gratitude for what they carried in themselves, Natalya Olifirovich believes, will help not only accept and endure the pain, but also stop the tragic relay race between generations.

About the expert

Natalia Olifirovich, candidate of psychological sciences, family psychologist, systems analyst, chairman of the council of the Republican public association "Society of Psychologists and Psychotherapists" Gestalt Approach "(Belarus).

Psychologies magazine interview

TEXT: Olga Kochetkova-Korelova