Mental Health in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Psychological Interventions in Jewish Displaced Persons Camps

Abstract

This study interrogates the historical methodology that underpins research undertaken by historians writing about mental health in the postwar world. I question their near-exclusive reliance on medical elites’ studies, correspondence and reports, and call instead for a closer analysis of the experiences of front-line workers, including social workers and nurses, to better understand the social, political, cultural, economic and gender dynamics that shape the diagnosis and treatment of civilian wartime trauma. Drawing upon the case reports and correspondence of a psychiatric social worker who counselled Holocaust survivors in a Displaced Persons camp in the American Zone of Allied-occupied Germany, I use this article as an opportunity to rethink how we write about the history of trauma and mental health.