Professor Explores Holocaust’s Effect on Children of Survivors : Psychology: Aaron Hass’ book and class discussions reflect a personal, intimate knowledge of the legacy.

Psychiatry professor Aaron Hass was astounded when he overheard part of a conversation between two undergraduate students during a break in a lecture at UCLA eight years ago.

“My parents went through the Holocaust in Europe,” said one student.

“Yeah, my parents probably had it just as tough. They went through the Depression in the United States,” said the other.

Hass, whose Jewish parents survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, was shocked by the comparison. “It was the level of ignorance, really,” he said.

The students’ conversation convinced him of the need to teach about the Holocaust. In 1984, after a year of honing his lifelong interest in the subject, Hass taught his first course.

Today, Hass teaches the class, which examines the psychological factors of Holocaust perpetrators and victims, at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where he is a psychology professor. He has also lectured internationally on the topic. Last year, a book he wrote about children of survivors, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Second Generation,” was a nominee for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

Florabel Kinsler, a licensed clinical social worker and specialist in treating Holocaust survivors for Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles, said Hass is forging a reputation in an area of psychology that has had little exploration.

“I felt he was picking up in an area that hadn’t been looked at since (author) Helen Epstein” in the 1970s, Kinsler said.

Peter Salovey, an associate professor of psychology at Yale University, praised the personal approach Hass used in his book. Hass quoted extensively from the often poignant interviews and written responses to questionnaires gathered from 48 children of survivors in the United States and Canada.

“I thought he did a very nice analysis without using the language, the baggage that a lot of psychologists use,” said Salovey, adding that “there is not a lot of psychological literature about children of survivors.”

Hass’ book, as well as his class discussions, reflect a personal, intimate knowledge of the Holocaust legacy. His father fought with the Polish resistance during World War II. His mother and her young daughter survived by posing as Catholics.

Yet, as with many children of survivors, Hass, who was born in 1948, learned of his parents’ experiences only in snippets.

“My parents were rather typical. They never sat me down, which again, survivors don’t normally sit their children down and tell them their stories,” Hass said.

In researching his book, Hass said he found much diversity in the ways children have reacted to what happened to their parents. Many of those interviewed indicated a deep-seated mistrust of non-Jews. Others told Hass that their oppressed background sensitized them to discrimination and enhanced their compassion for the plight of other minorities.

Hass also found a paradox in the relationship between survivors and their children.

“On the one hand, it’s a very intense relationship, very close, very protective,” Hass said. “On the other hand, it’s very superficial because of the following: Survivors have a psychological need to see their children as always being perfectly happy. Because to acknowledge otherwise . . . the effects of the Holocaust reach to the second generation, (which) would mean another victory for Hitler.”

Christine Williams, who took Hass’ course at Dominguez Hills last semester, said his personal insight on the Holocaust “brings it home a little more.”

Williams, a non-Jewish Filipina, said she knew little about the Holocaust or Jews before taking the course.

“The course has really been an enlightening experience,” said Williams, a junior majoring in business. “I certainly have a lot more sympathy for the people.”

Hass said his course at Dominguez Hills, which is among the most ethnically diverse campuses in the Cal State system, has very few Jewish students.

“In fact, many of the students in my course have never known a Jew,” said Hass, who is also an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA. “So the material is a complete revelation to them.”

Hass spent the spring of 1989 as a visiting professor at a university in Frankfurt, Germany. He had been invited to teach a course called the “Psychological History of the Holocaust,” but found that the students were at first unreceptive to his lectures.

“They’re tired and angry about any attempts either explicitly or implicitly to try to make them feel guilty about what took place before they were born,” Hass said.

“But one morning when I started teaching about the lingering psychological aftereffects on survivors, I sensed a complete change in mood, a greater attentiveness, sympathy, interest.”

Hass said the explanation is simple. The students, and most people, have no understanding that for hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, their trauma did not stop with the end of World War II.

The evidence is reflected in the experiences of children of survivors, Hass said as he sat in the living room of his Beverly Glen home. He pointed to a passage in his book, a portion of an interview that he found particularly telling:

“My name is Joseph. It’s an international name given to me so if I have to flee it is easily translatable. Growing up, I was repeatedly told to be a doctor so that if I have to escape a place I can use those skills anywhere. My life has been a preparation for the potential need to uproot myself at a moment’s notice. . . . Every day I heard about the Holocaust and I’ve been getting ready for it to happen again.”