Who is Dalia Sion?
Dalia Sion She is a clinical social worker and guides and manages the "Amech" branch in Haifa and the north for the past 24 years, during which the branch has grown and is today built from 3 branches and groups in the entire northern region from Hadera to Kiryat Shmona. During her professional years she worked in schools with children, at a mental health center in Jerusalem. For 11 years Dalia worked in the United States, in a psychoanalytical hospital for mental disorders. Upon her return to Israel, Dalia worked with Ministry of Defense groups around bereavement and post-traumatic disorders.
What is your role in your community Haifa?
"In 1996 I started managing Amach Haifa and the North. My duties include managing a team of 150 therapists together with a management team that includes psychologists and social workers, therapists in various arts, and psychiatrists.
I am also engaged in clinical work, development of a learning team, the development of the center and the deepening of learning about the long-term consequences of trauma as we have learned from the survivors for the benefit of other groups of trauma victims in Israeli society."
Does your personal story include the background of a family coming out of the Holocaust?
"No, I am not from a Holocaust survivor family, but I grew up in Tel Aviv and many families of Holocaust survivors lived around me"
What is the situation of Holocaust survivors and their descendants in Haifa compared to other cities?
"Haifa is indeed the city with the largest number of Holocaust survivors, but I don't know if their situation and the situation of their descendants is different from other cities. The city has many organizations that offer various help and support to the survivors who are also the elders of the city, from handling rights to volunteers working for their welfare.
Within the Haifa complex, Amach is a unique organization which provides mental and emotional support to survivors and their families. Haifa's welfare department appointed an array in which it built a round table, which tries to raise resources and take care of all the survivors. Some of them live well and a minority in economic distress. Most of the survivors live mentally dealing with old age and its loss, against the background of traumatic memories and this is not different in my opinion from city to city, but within the nature of the different cities. In cities where the socioeconomic level is low, of course the survivors living in this city will also suffer from this."
What is the greatest difficulty and recurring distress for Holocaust survivors and their relatives?
"I would say that the greatest difficulty in these years is the old age of the survivors and the harms of loss they experience in old age (retirement, loss of physical abilities, loss of relatives, dependency, cognitive and health decline).
Losses and weakening of internal and external resources that increase post-traumatic memories and associations with similar feelings and experiences in the Holocaust, which remind survivors of losses, vulnerabilities, difficulties and distress. From this arise the difficulties of the relatives, children and spouses, who have to take care of their parents or spouses and face these hardships against the background of sometimes complex relationships in the families of the survivors."
What happens to them on the day of the Holocaust?
"Holocaust Day is a day of remembrance, a day when the survivors cannot distract themselves from the memories, which can be oppressive and difficult, and at the same time they have a need to bring up the memories and tell them, a need that has increased in recent years, with the pressing time around the end of life and old age. The desire to leave a mark, which is not They will forget, they will receive recognition and they will know their story which is a whole world, personal and unique and not inclusive and sweeping like in that time when they were in the Holocaust: a group of Jews without identities and personal faces.
On Holocaust Day, everyone has a personal story there and inside."
What response does the "Emach" association give to Holocaust survivors?
"On Holocaust Day and in general, we first of all listen to the personal story, testify to the memories, acknowledge the losses and hardships but also the coping and resourcefulness. We find out together with the survivors the meaning of the story of suffering and rescue, what they extract from the personal story intact for themselves and their children, where the memories colored their perception of the world Theirs, where they hurt and affected their understanding of family, relationships, losses and misses, raising children, and more.
We offer everything from the possibility of receiving individual and group psychological therapy, mental therapy at home for those with limited mobility, social psychological support through the activity of a social club in your community, visiting volunteers, and psychiatric follow-up.
We carry out an activity that involves a community such as school students, Navy soldiers, service girls, kindergarten children, etc. and create an envelope of psychosocial treatment that has a therapeutic sequence according to the needs of the applicants."
Does the state listen to the survivors?
"Since the Eichmann trial and in recent years, the state, through the Authority for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors, has been listening to the survivors. The state has improved and expanded their rights to compensation and emotional support, expanded the circle of those defined as survivors, and shows more understanding of their suffering. The basic assumption is that they deserve it, even if it is in the form of emotional support for which they are entitled or in money, the state's recognition of what they went through and the losses they experienced and the effects of the traumatic experiences on their mental and physical health is very important."
Has society's attitude towards Holocaust survivors eroded over the years?
"No, on the contrary!
The ethos of the Holocaust survivors has actually strengthened, they are no longer "as sheep to the slaughter" and sometimes the survivors and the Holocaust are used for different interests. The ethos of the kibbutzim has weakened, they are no longer the "salt of the earth" which was the opposite in the first years of the state when it built itself, and weakness and sacrifices were not understood."
The Holocaust permeates the second and third generations. How is this expressed?
"In the families of Holocaust survivors, as in any family, there is an issue of intergenerational transmission and thus patterns of coping are reproduced and imitated as in any family.
The members of the second generation did not allow themselves the freedom to be angry, to say good-bye to their parents, in the face of the suffering, after all, how could their children do this to them after everything they went through. This pattern also included the fear of asking so as not to hurt and the fear of the survivors to tell so as not to burden.
There were survivors who told too much, in an overwhelming and inappropriate way without the children having the ability to digest. The third generation, with the root works, was able to hear more of the story of the surviving grandparents, but as with any family complexity, here too there is an effect that the first generation skipped over the second generation and held a dialogue with the third generation. There are families in which the silence continued even between the second and third generations."
What is happening to us today when the Holocaust is several generations behind us?
"I am a witness to the fact that the second generation, which is now in its 60s and 70s, seeks to know and ask its parents, to know their story, to understand the effects of their behavior, expressions, dreams and difficulties that affected the second generation. The survivors have a need to know and tell their parents' story, sorrow for missing out They didn't ask, and sometimes there is no one left. Evidence of this is attendance at discourse meetings in your people, therapy groups, organizations such as continuing generations, remembrance in the living room, and more. Israeli society in all its shades also recognizes that time is running out and wants to hear and know the stories of the survivors."
Has the memory of the Holocaust faded?
"No. Evidence of this is the increased interest in the survivors and the story of the Holocaust. Including your interest and that of a live site here on the subject."
Do you think that in a few years there will be no memory of the Holocaust?
"The survivors are still with us, for at least another 10 years, maybe in 50 years it will become a historical event that will be studied like other subjects."
Who commemorates her?
"The commemorators are members of the second and third generations, countries that were complicit in this disaster, mainly Germany, but also Poland, Holland, and Austria depending on the spirit of the times. Members of various nations affected by the Holocaust and various bodies and organizations such as Yad Vashem, the Ghetto Fighters, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, USA "B. Tombstones of the veterans of the various communities in memory of the victims in various cemeteries and memorials throughout Israel and Europe and in Holocaust museums around the world."
What happens to holocaust survivors during the corona virus?
"Perhaps at the moment this is the most topical question, since there are features of closure and curfew, and as a result of this, the loneliness and separation of the elderly from the rest of the population - motifs that connect to the Holocaust period on the one hand and on the other hand it is not similar, because all the basic needs are present. Today there is a feeling of being able to cope, we have been through difficult things Of these but also vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
In order to strengthen the survivors of the holocaust during the Corona period, we in your people are trying not to break up the sense of belonging like the Nazis broke up families and communities, and sent them to their deaths.
Caring, help and human support are extremely important, at this time, to facilitate the memories and indeed to be all living human tissue."
With you is an organization of special people. The therapists have a big heart and a listening ear, and for that, good luck. A special job that gives strength. citation. Hope they get budgets that will constantly strengthen them.