Homeless Vietnam Veteran Survived Holocaust

First the beginning...

"But that’s just the beginning of his story. Radkowski — a Holocaust survivor, naturalized American citizen, Vietnam veteran, and Air Force and U.S. civil-service retiree — had been chronically homeless since the early 2000s." 

"For Radkowski, camping behind McGuire Air Force Base 'made a lot of sense. It was what I could afford. I started camping out about 10 years ago in a sleeping bag, with a poncho, in case it rained.'"

"After a year of talking with him and gaining his trust, the Veterans Multi-Service Center in Center City was able to house him through a cooperative effort with the Veterans Administration."

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Colorado WWII Veteran Meets Holocaust Survivor He Rescued

WWII VETERAN REUNITED WITH HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR HE RESCUED
ABC 11 News
May 18, 2016

A World War II veteran from Colorado was reunited with a Holocaust survivor whom he set free from a concentration camp seven decades ago -- and the emotional moment was captured on camera.

Sid Shafner, 94, is back in the U.S. after a stirring eight-day trip to Israel and Poland last week. He was honored at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony for his hand, as a young troop, in helping to liberate some 30,000 prisoners from the Dachau Concentration Camp in southern Germany in 1945.

One of those prisoners was 19-year-old Marcel Levy, now 90.
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Does The Impact Of Psychological Trauma Cross Generations? Dah!

I can't believe I'm reading this! New research? If this is new research then the researchers must have been born and lived their lives in a bubble.

Psychologists have always asked, "Why did you hate your mother?" for a reason. Our parents play an important role in what we turn out to be but it goes into what their lives were all about as well.

This study took a look at families of Holocaust survivors. They took a look at how the DNA could be altered but what they didn't do was understand how living with someone with PTSD changes everything for the people they live with.

I knew what PTSD was when our daughter was growing up. I knew how to smooth things over between my husband and her but there were things she still had no tolerance for and would get very upset. She was raised knowing why he acted the way he did, yet even with that knowledge, it effected her.

My readers know my Dad was a violent alcoholic until I was 13. Living under those conditions of his anger, outbursts and shame of neighbors seeing him stagger up the driveway, left a scar in every member of my family. My Mom ended up bitter toward him. All of it robbed her of the joyful spirit she showed others. She was a generous woman and very loving but even she couldn't forgive him. Many years after he passed away, the pain inside of her came out whenever she talked about my Dad. My brothers carried it all inside of them as well with parts of their soul being eaten away because they were unable to forgive my Dad for his actions. I forgave him. For the most part, I healed. There are still times when what he did and didn't do gather up forces attempting to take over my "bliss" robbing me of hope.

My Dad had a problem with his Dad because he was an alcoholic too and was mean to him. My Dad was the same way with us no matter how much he hated how his own father acted. We paid for how he acted in one way or another and so did our kids. It is generational but not genetic. It is from how each generation treated the next that left the mark.

For many veterans it will be the same story because they don't understand it. Their families don't understand it so they have no way to minimize the damage done. They don't have the tools to deal with the anger and hostility PTSD in the home can cause and this ends up making the living conditions worse. When kids grow up with all that comes with PTSD, it wears on them and can leave scars inside of them that will carry on to the next generation. Knowing what it is, why they act the way they do and what the rest of the family can do about it, will reduce a lot of the damage being done and thus, reduce what the next generation will have to deal with.

What we all go through determines where we are going and the lives of those we take with us on this journey. Each one of us are affected by events in our own lives but those events include the people we live with. If these researchers didn't see the obvious, then what else are they missing?

Does The Impact Of Psychological Trauma Cross Generations?

In groups with high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as the survivors of the Nazi Death Camps, the adjustment problems of their children, the so-called "Second Generation", have received attention by researchers. Studies suggested that some symptoms or personality traits associated with PTSD may be more common in the Second Generation than the general population. It has been assumed that these trans-generational effects reflected the impact of PTSD upon the parent-child relationship rather than a trait passed biologically from parent to child.

However, Dr. Isabelle Mansuy and colleagues provide new evidence in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry that some aspects of the impact of trauma cross generations and are associated with epigenetic changes, i.e., the regulation of the pattern of gene expression, without changing the DNA sequence.
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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/200410.php

Ex-homeless woman leaves $150,000 to Hebrew University

Ex-homeless woman leaves $150,000 to Hebrew University
Story Highlights
Woman died two years ago; estate's executor asks that she remain anonymous

Holocaust survivor lived on New York streets until accountant befriended her

University spokesman: "This was a special story and a special gift"



(CNN) -- A Jewish Holocaust survivor who later lived on the streets of New York City has left half of her $300,000 estate to Hebrew University, the school said Monday.

"It moved us very much," university spokesman Yefet Ozery said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, where the school is based.

"Hebrew University has many, many donors and benefactors and supporters and many people remember us in their will, but I haven't come across such a person that lived actually as a poor woman who would give half of her bequest to Hebrew University," Ozery said.

The woman, who died two years ago in her 90s, has not been identified publicly at the request of her estate's executor, he said.

"He didn't want her name to be remembered as a homeless" person, Ozery said.

The woman, who had no known relatives, survived a concentration camp and was living on the streets of New York's Upper West Side several years ago when a Jewish accountant befriended her, Ozery said.
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Ex-homeless woman leaves $150,000 to Hebrew University

Extent of Nazi Camps Far Greater Than Realized

Extent of Nazi Camps Far Greater Than Realized
Decade-Long Study by Holocaust Museum Scholars Could Alter Public Understanding

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 4, 2009

A little more than a decade ago, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum decided to create an encyclopedia of concentration camps. They assumed the finished work would be massive, featuring a staggering 5,000 to 7,000 camps and ghettos.

They underestimated by 15,000.

Their ultimate count of more than 20,000 camps -- which they reached after a year of research -- is far more than most scholars had known existed and might reshape public understanding of the scope of the Holocaust itself.

"What's going to happen is that the mental universe of how scholars operate is going to change," said Steven Katz, director of Boston University's Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies. "Instead of thinking of main death camps, people are going to understand that this was a continent-wide phenomenon."

The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos: 1933-1945 "is the first major reference work for Holocaust studies since . . . the fall of the U.S.S.R." and the opening of many European archives, says Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. As a result, more information was available to researchers than had ever been before.
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Extent of Nazi Camps Far Greater Than Realized

Many Holocaust survivors live with PTSD

Many Holocaust survivors live with PTSD

By DONNA KOEHN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 30, 2009

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Holocaust survivors spend lives searching for sibling
TAMPA - The final years are supposed to be a time of reflection, of pride in one's children and grandchildren, of looking back with satisfaction on accomplishments of a life well-lived.

To survivors of the Holocaust and combat soldiers of World War II, they instead can bring nightmares, terrifying flashbacks and a rekindling of trauma submerged but never really put to rest.

Maya Lazarus sees it in those who attend Holocaust survivor support groups through Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

"They are reliving it for the second time," she says. "For them, it is happening all over again."

They shun psychotherapy, but almost all take sleeping pills to help fend off nightmares, she says. Jewish nursing homes now renovate showers to look more homey and less like the dreaded gas chambers.

"All of them are hoarding bread like crazy," Lazarus says. "Food is always an issue because they were once starving."

Eric Gentry of Compassion Unlimited of Sarasota is an expert in the treatment of late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

People who survived the Holocaust, as well as combat veterans of World War II, are especially vulnerable to the effects of PTSD in later years because no one realized at the time how devastating such experiences could be in the long term, he says.

PTSD — afflicting those who suffer a traumatic event and subsequently experience anxiety and a variety of debilitating symptoms — became widely studied after the Vietnam War.
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Many Holocaust survivors live with PTSD