​Transgenerational inheritance - from the victim's point of view and experience.

1. What is trauma?

It took a long time for traumatic experiences to be recognized as a mental illness by classical psychiatry. While working with Freud, the Frenchman Charcot found out that the soldiers of World War I suffered from post-traumatic disorder because they were shell-shocked in the trenches.

A trauma is an emotional experience that is impossible to integrate. One is helpless and powerless at the mercy of the external event. One lacks the psychological resources to cope with an emotionally stressful experience.

In the following lecture, I would like to mainly describe how war trauma is passed on to the next generation. This is called transgenerational inheritance.

In genetic research, transgenerational inheritance was discovered in an interesting experiment with mice. Several dams were first presented with a flower whose smell was particularly appealing. Then the mice were given an electric shock at the same time as they enjoyed the fragrance. The mice then avoided smelling because they were afraid of being electrocuted.

This experience is called an epigenetic experience. Now the following happened: The offspring of these dams avoided the flowers just like their mothers, although they had never had the same experience as their mothers. They showed the same fears as their mothers. This behavior of the original mothers extended out over five generations.

The question now arises as to how transgenerational inheritance unfolds in humans.

2. Epigenetics and the important role of mirror neurons in transgenerational inheritance.

Neurobiology and genetic research have made tremendous advances in recent years. Much knowledge that had endured for centuries was suddenly overturned. The emergent research field of epigenetics plays a major role in this.

According to scientific findings, the genome, DNA, is an important organ. Next to chromosomes, it was observed that the DNA protein sequence was not used at all. This piqued researchers' curiosity and the following was discovered. Chromosomes are retained and passed on.

At the same time, however, chromosomes are mirrored, and crucial environmental experiences are stored on the mirrored chromosomes. As a result, environmental experiences are integrated into the genome and passed on. Environmental experiences are now known as epigenetic experiences.

It has further been established that we have a huge arsenal of genes which, as a communication system, control our organism and ensure that it functions. But since we encounter epigenetic experiences, these have a determining influence on the function of genes.

Epigenetic experiences are not only stored in our genome but are also able to link up to genes and influence their function. These genes are either switched off or activated. As such, epigenetic environmental experiences have a decisive influence on the functioning of our organism, and these experiences are inherited.

Therefore, we can no longer maintain the old thesis that any influence on our organism is due to either environmental or inherent systemic factors.

I would like to quote an impressive example for my previous explanations:

We have an anti-stress gene from birth, but it only unfolds and fulfills its function through a certain epigenetic experience after birth. The gene only works if the baby experiences a positive attachment with the mother after birth. If this bond does not take place, then the anti-stress gene cannot develop, and we evolve a low-stress tolerance. This early childhood experience is largely responsible for later depression.

Now the question still arises as to how parental war experiences are passed on to children transgenerationally.

About thirty years ago, the neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzalotti and his research team discovered mirror neurons by chance in Parma. His team wanted to research which motor area in the neocortex monkeys grip an object with, and which types of this action are needed for this activity. A monkey, let's call him Max, got wired up, and the motor area in the neocortex connected to a computer.

The investigator prepared the experiment by picking up a banana and placing it on the table. The monkey watched the experimenter carefully. When the experimenter undertook the action, the research group was startled by a real thunderstorm coming from the computer. At first, everyone believed that the computer was broken. But it was not so. The researchers repeated this process a few times, and each time the computer responded in the same way.

It was then that they realized they had made an important discovery. The monkey's brain had special neurons in the motor cortex that responded when action was observed. Rizzalotti's researchers called these neurons mirror neurons because these neurons intuitively imitated an action when it was observed. The imitation was a simulation. Because the monkey only observed, but otherwise showed no reaction.

Sticking with their discovery, the researchers found that not only was the monkey simulating an observed action, but it could also foresee the other's intention and recognize the targets.

Over time, specific experiments with imaging instruments were made with humans and it was discovered that we also have mirror neurons. These are stored in the motor cortex and connected to the visual and auditory areas. This creates a mirror neuron system in the brain. This system stores all actions that we observe from birth. Over time, we internalize these observed actions and store them. These inner patterns of action include both the action and the people we observe doing these actions. In this way we generate the ability to sense what the other is up to, what his intention is.

These processes are intuitive. For our topic of transgenerational inheritance, the scientific results described above are invaluable. It is a physical experience that connects us with other people.

Not only is the real observable action felt, but also the inner feelings. Because as children we observe the face of the primary caregiver very closely from birth. The intersubjective phase in a toddler begins at 9 months. The toddler takes its cues from the mother's face as to whether it must be afraid or not. The mother's face speaks volumes. The intuitively experienced events are sent to the insula and stored there as feelings. The face is watched as well as the actions. The child feels what the mother feels. Over a long period of time, the child identifies with the mother's feelings. This process is also known as emotional contagion.

Only much later may we become able to cognitively dissolve this emotional contagion. On the one hand, we can distance ourselves from another person, on the other hand, we have compassion for their feelings. We call this process empathy.

Empathy is the basis of social behavior in a positive sense, but then again, empathy can also lead us to fall victim to transgenerational inheritance. I will describe some examples of my experience with transgenerational inheritance below.

3. My experience with the transgenerational inheritance of my war-traumatized parents.

First, I would like to describe my parents' side. My mother came from an Orthodox family. As early as 1939, shortly after the start of the war, her family was imprisoned in the first ghetto in Poland, in Piotrkov, a small town south of Lodz. My mother was 16 years old at the time and had already graduated from high school. She contacted the underground organization in the ghetto and fled to Warsaw with false papers. There she taught Polish students at a high school and obtained a new passport.

She gave up her Jewish identity and was from then on called Alice Rostovska. She kept this name until her death. In 1942 she learned that the ghetto would be disestablished and that all inmates would be sent to the gas chambers at Treblinka. She immediately procured false papers for her sister and mother and saved them both from death.

She had to leave her father behind in the ghetto because, as an Orthodox Jew, he did not speak Polish and had no chance of survival in his traditional getup. He was also ill and died in the ghetto soon after his family's departure.

Alice hid her mother in the country and her sister in a convent in Warsaw. The terms for my aunt Irena were that she too now had to externally abandon Judaism and embrace the Catholic faith.

My mother joined an underground group and lived in fear of death in the Aryan part of Warsaw. But one day she was caught by a Polish blackmailer who was cooperating with the Gestapo. She gave him the only valuable ring she had, but at the same time seduced the blackmailer and became his lover.

In a misguided moment, my mother gave herself away: She said to me: "The blackmailer had the same name as your father." I was so shocked that I didn't dare ask any more questions.

Now to me: My later parents were a conflicted couple. On the one hand my father, a staunch Nazi, and my mother, a Holocaust survivor. I was born into an explosive parenting situation. From the beginning, I was tormented by my father because a Nazi couldn't stand having fathered a Jewish son. My mother was unable to protect me.

As in many families where one or both had survived the Holocaust, there was steadfast silence. All my life I have been constantly lied to by my parents about their past. I can also say with certainty today that for them the war was not over, on the contrary. It was only later, at an advanced age, that I shuddered and realized in total shock that for decades I had been the persecuted and blackmailed Jew from Warsaw in the Second World War.

I had great difficulties at school and my parents decided to send me to boarding school. To their surprise, I decided to go to a Catholic boarding school. I soon wrote my mother a long letter in which I revealed that I could finally live in freedom and escape prison. Though inwardly, I suffered terribly in this boarding school. For more than three and a half years, until I graduated from high school, I was in constant panic that I would have to say a Christian, Catholic prayer in public. I didn't know why I was so afraid. It was only when I saw the documentary about my aunt Irena, my mother's sister, while filming in Poland, that I realized what I had experienced in boarding school. I have seen my aunt maybe twice in my life, but while watching the film I was amazed to find that she experienced the same feelings in the convent as I did in boarding school.

My mother did not enlighten me about Judaism either, and I vaguely knew that I was a Jew. I experienced the same anxious feelings as my aunt and mother did during the war. At boarding school, I became more and more terrified of showing myself in public because I was afraid of being killed or at least somehow putting my life in danger. I didn't participate in class either, I always kept quiet, even if I knew the answers.

The Jew from Warsaw: Even if I never experienced the Second World War, I grew up in the middle of the Aryan part of Warsaw as a persecuted Jew in my family. Since both of my parents were Polish, Polish would have been my actual mother tongue. When I started learning to speak as a child, my mother intended to teach me Polish. So, I spoke Polish to her first. But my father interfered with my mother's resolution.

I thus had to speak German and later learned the Swiss dialect on the street. In my presence, my parents always spoke Polish and I didn't understand anything. I felt left out. They always said to me: "We were advised that you should only speak German because two languages would confuse you. And it is important to us that you become a real Swiss." I believed them, but it always made me feel strange. When I read Saul Friedländer's book, "Nazi Germany and the Jews", a few years ago, I immediately understood how I was betrayed and completely misinformed.

There I read that the Orthodox Jews only spoke Yiddish and not Polish. Yiddish sounds like Swiss German. I was also systematically permanently excluded from my family. My father beat me, tormented me, and most of all, humiliated me all the time. This is how the Nazis treated the Jews until the Final Solution. It wasn't until late, at almost 70 years old, that I understood the whole story behind my parents' behavior. Not only at boarding school but also at home I had to hide and do everything not to ever get noticed. I was very afraid to ask questions.

For years I felt insecure and scared, outwardly I played a role. The feeling of being excluded and rejected in one's own family triggers unspeakable loneliness. Out of fear, I never asked any questions, I was quiet at home and let everything wash over me. I didn't feel any hatred towards my parents, but I was constantly facing unspeakable hatred, especially from my father.

He was the superior Nazi; I was the unworthy life. Like the Jews in the war, I was treated as vermin. When my father beat me, when he demeaned me at the table or made fun of me, my mother just watched. She watched the spectacle with wide, fearful eyes and never defended me. Because she had to seduce my father during the war to survive, she had to cooperate with him and betray Jews. That scenario was repeated in our family. Boarding school was not only my salvation but also a fear-imbued escape from home. As things go, I experienced the denial of Judaism as a constant burden in Catholic school.

Today it seems like a miracle to me that I passed my high school diploma even with great difficulty. My worst experience was the terrible loneliness I got into. There was no one I could speak to, and no one came to my rescue.

It took years for me to be able to speak openly about it the way I do in public today. Therapies didn't help me because although the therapists knew everything, they had great existential fear of my mother. My parents were not interested in my seeing through their war experiences and holding them accountable for their behavior.

Even long after her death, they haunted me as internalized introjects and I kept feeling like the child I'd been, suppressed and insecure.

Only later, owing to the book about my mother and the film, was I able to thoroughly research my story and understand it in its entirety, and I then felt safe.

Before filming in Poland, I had three goals: I wanted to bring my parents' war experiences back to the place where they came from. They have nothing to do with me.

It was also very important to me that my parents became normal people for me and that I could develop a relationship with them. They should no longer be Martians to me that I had no relationship with. It was only when I learned my story exactly that I was able to enter a relationship with my parents on an equal footing as an independent Martin, even if they were long dead. It was an uplifting feeling. I got rid of the persecuted Jew from Warsaw, but I have no relation to actual Judaism. Today, at my age, it is too late to develop a Jewish identity.

Finally, I wanted to symbolically bury my parents where they came from, namely in Poland. So, I came back home as a Swiss migrant after filming. I have no relationship with Poland because they made it impossible for me to have one. By the end of the film shoot, I'd dissolved my transgenerational inheritance and that is the greatest success of my life.

My parents have already been dead for some time and are finally far away from my experience and their power is now finally broken.

I am often asked if I have now forgiven my parents. I cannot do that because I have been cheated of many, hindered, opportunities in my life. But it is an uplifting feeling to live the rest of my life in freedom and self-determination.

At the end of the lecture, I would like to describe the psychotherapeutic implications that help to free people with transgenerational inheritance from the clutches of their parents. As a psychotherapist, I was able to benefit a lot from my self-awareness.

4. Therapeutic approaches

The fact that children are often victims of transgenerational inheritance from parents who survived the war is a traumatic experience. Most of the time, the parents are not aware that they are transferring their war experiences to the child. In such cases, the child is abused into taking on his parent's dissociated trauma. On the one hand, he is burdened with the experiences of his parents, but he also protects the parents from not feeling their own experiences anymore. It doesn't quite work. I have experienced it myself. However, the child tries with all his might, to satisfy the wish of the parents to forget their terrible experience. If this fails, the pressure from the parents increases. The child senses very clearly that the parents are very afraid that the transmission to the child might no longer work, and the child is subjected to violent control. Without their noticing, the parents identify themselves with the perpetrator.

As a therapist, it is my job to educate clients about the mechanism of transgenerational inheritance. It is then especially important that I be able, with the clients, to reconstruct the history of their parents as precisely as possible. Often the parents have already died and in most cases, they did not tell their experiences but kept quiet about them.

That was their only chance to "process" their terrible experiences in their own way. As I have described above, however, children have a genetic make-up for empathy. Often parents remain silent but force their children to adopt their split-off experiences as their identity. For me, this form of trauma therapy is the only chance to free clients from the grip of transgenerational inheritance.

5. Closing remarks

I am convinced that a victim should not be allowed either to identify with the perpetrator. This is the only way I can break inheritance. When I deal with my victim experience in therapy, there is no longer the temptation to torture other people and it is no longer appropriate to use violence. Because you then know exactly how the other hurts because you have confronted your own injuries.

Psycho-economic experiments have clearly shown that people actually tend to be fair. This knowledge can also be applied here. Once I've processed my injuries, I don't have to pass them on. The threshold for violence is too high.

The aim of therapy is to give back to the parents their traumatic transmissions and to live one's own true self independently.

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Translated by Gabriella Becchina.

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