"Prisoner of Her Past" is a very interesting documentary on PBS about a Holocaust Survivor who is now living in a convalescent home but still keeps her bag packed and doesn't trust anyone. She never talked about her past to her children but one day in her old age she packed her bag and left her home because "someone" was going to kill her. She is experiencing PTSD according to the doctor's at the Home and now talks about her fears all the time.
In 1942, when she was 10, her mother sent her and her sister out of the home to hide so they would not be rounded up and killed, as was happening to the Jews in the Ghetto. She never saw her parents again. She cannot tell exactly what happened to her or how she survived but she obviously was sexually abused as that comes out again and again in her references now.
Her son, who is a writer, told her story as it became known to him and as he traveled to Poland to try and trace her roots. It is an excellent documentary and adds more information to the Holocaust documentaries I have been watching.
It was interesting that it was not just the Nazi's killing the Jews -- it was the local Ukrainians and others policeman as well. Whether they were being forced by the Nazis is not known for sure by these children survivors. They were witnesses to a lot that happened but as one man said it is like a series of photographs in his mind, not a continual memory. He listened as his mother was burned in a fire started by Hungarians when his family was hiding in a building. Then he watched his father being beat to death by a man with a gun. He was taken in by a Czech family, father only 24, but this father treated him so well, he learned to trust and survived without any PTSD. His sister who was abused sexually as she grew older after they left the Czech farm came out of the war very ill and was never mentally well again. Interesting though, he was the father who would not raise his son Jewish. He siad, "I was so good, I was so good, and God was not good to me, he took both my parents."
The two children of these Holocaust Survivors were having a conversation about being active Jews. The one raised in Poland said his father did not feel it was good for him to be raised Jewish so he was not. The one raised in America said there was so much hate from the Holocaust Survivors when they got together that it drove him away from Religion and he lost himself in his music.
Interesting documentary--in fact they end it with what they are doing with children who survived Katrina to help them not to have PTSD. They interviewed some of those children and one girl told how she has a bag packed by her bed all the time. Of course, we are all supposed to have that, aren't we? Most important of all for a healthy survival is to Tell Your Story!!! Don't hold it all in. That is what I do--we all need to tell our story.