Echoes of war: great-grandchildren of veterans are paying for their unlived grief

“If we compare compatriots from the former USSR, the third and fourth generation after the participants of the Great Patriotic War, then we can say that they still carry a tragedy that was not comprehended in time, experienced and passed on to descendants as a reworked experience,” says the systemic family psychotherapist Natalya Olifirovich. – Look at the faces of people in the post-Soviet space, especially in the morning. They are gloomy, dull, gray, as if there is no reason for joy. Compare them with the faces of residents of other countries – participants in the Second World War. Our country – I mean the entire territory of the former USSR – won. It would seem, why not rejoice?

“Top Secret”

Because our country, despite the past seven decades, is still in mourning, the psychotherapist is convinced. Our grief is still “not mourned.” After the war, there was no time to grieve and lick the wounds – it was necessary to restore the destroyed economy. And to speak out loud about what did not fit into the picture of a triumphant victory was life-threatening.

The soldiers returning from the front could not share their experiences even with their loved ones: some were not allowed – it was a state secret, some simply ousted terrible shots from their memory, some were afraid to speak out loud, because even the walls then had ears. About fellow soldiers killed before our eyes, about hunger, unbearable trials, animal fear and the daily choice “either they will kill me, or I will kill first” – all this had to be silent. About how friends who were first taken prisoner perished in the camps, how soldiers often behaved cruelly when they found themselves in foreign territories: now there are many declassified documents about the reverse side of the war. But a huge amount of material is still kept under the heading “Secret”. And there are fewer and fewer living witnesses of those events who could tell the truth. But even those who are alive do not want to share it.

“War is grief in all respects and fronts. Not only in the literal sense, – says Natalya Olifirovich. – Everyone, without exception, fell into the meat grinder: both the civilian population, and those who fought, and those who worked in the rear. It is not customary to talk about how families broke up because of front-line love; how women died, and the new wives of the returned front-line soldiers did not accept their children from their first marriages and sent them to orphanages; how people were eaten in besieged Leningrad; how soldiers and officers behaved in the occupied territories; how women at the front got pregnant and either had abortions or were forced to leave their children.

Everyone who survived or did not survive the war left something unspoken that was encapsulated and passed on to the next generations. Often these are feelings of guilt and shame. Almost everyone who went through the war in one capacity or another has a so-called survivor complex: at the same time joy that he survived, and guilt that the other died. These people seemed to be hovering between two worlds – life and death, the ghosts of the past are always with them.

“Guilt and shame means that there is a lot of swallowed and unexpressed aggression. As a result, it is impossible to rejoice and build a new life. And it is passed on to the next generations. How does it manifest itself? Someone migrates away, someone begins to behave destructively or show auto-aggression – hence different addictions, self-inflicted wounds: the same tattoos, piercing – a manifestation of auto-aggression, ”Natalya Olifirovich is convinced.

When the historical experience of the family cannot be experienced and digested, the descendants begin to kill themselves, sometimes literally. Often the story is told in a truncated or distorted form. For example, we tell the children a myth: that the great-grandfather was brave, did not lose heart, heroically went through the whole war. And we are silent about the fact that he experienced fear, deprivation, despaired, wept and killed. Sometimes the story is not transmitted at all, becoming a family secret. Or we call children the names of their ancestors, involuntarily or consciously dooming them to the same fate.

Symptom of unknown origin

Much of what happened during the war was taboo. But if we cannot tell about some experience directly, we still convey it – non-verbally. “And then it becomes affectively colored, but without details – and the next generations complete the plot, fill in the voids, speculate.”

As systemic family psychologists say, by the fourth generation, unstructured, non-verbalized, non-symbolized experience becomes a symptom that the great-grandchildren of the winners carry in the body. Often even the third generation – the grandchildren of front-line soldiers – show inexplicable anxieties and illnesses. In the first generation – unlived experience. In the second – the diffusion of identity, in the third – the pathology of the emotional sphere, up to borderline states. The fourth receives symptoms that doctors often do not undertake to treat – they are sent to psychologists. “German colleagues came to us, and they cited other data: that psychological trauma “fonits” six generations, and only in the seventh generation do the ancestors calm down,” the psychotherapist shares.

One of Natalia’s clients, an 18-year-old boy, suffered from suffocation. Attacks became more frequent by the May holidays. They thought it was asthma, they went to the doctors, they sinned for allergies. “I asked if there was something in their family with suffocation?” Natalya recalls. The boy’s mother went to her mother with questions. It turned out that the boy’s great-grandfather fought. And it so happened that once, on the orders of a senior in rank, he had to hang innocent young guys – 16-17-year-olds – for some petty offense. He was very sorry that he was forced to do this, and he remembered this all his life, especially during the celebration of the Victory. When the client learned this story, his seizures stopped.

Another client, born in 1975, came in with a problem of inexplicable workaholism. She worked so hard that she ended up in the hospital more than once. In the story, the phrases slipped: “I seem to be working for ten people,” “It’s as if I don’t need this for myself.” We started researching family history. Grandmother refused to tell what happened many years ago. The young woman’s mother said. The truth was horrifying. Both the client herself, and her mother, and grandmother were Jewish, which was very carefully hidden from everyone, including from her granddaughter. The client’s grandmother is the only one who survived after the execution of the entire family by the Nazis in Kiev at Babi Yar. The girl, despite the risk of being killed, was hidden by the neighbors. She ran to the pits and looked for her relatives, and all her life she remembered how the earth moved and groaned, with which thousands of executed bodies were covered. This shocked and frightened her so much that, having matured, she moved away from Kiev, married a Russian and “buried” her origin forever. And the granddaughter? She lives for all the dead, “works for ten.” When the secret was revealed, the woman received a long-awaited relief.

Another client of Natalia – a young man of 27 years old – has begun to suffocate for some time now. Despite treatment and even surgery, the attacks did not stop. When they began to understand the history of the family, it turned out that during the war the man’s great-grandfather was a Belarusian partisan. In the occupied village, his wife’s sister remained in the house with her children and her children. The policemen told her to inform her as soon as her relative came from the forest, otherwise they would kill her. “My great-grandfather was shot dead when he was holding his two-year-old son, my client’s grandfather, in his arms. He gurgled blood, choked, the child managed to be picked up from the hands of a dying father. The boy, who by that time knew how to say something, fell silent for a long time. This is how, in the form of suffocation, the fourth generation passed on that horror that was never spoken about in the family.

Another client brought her 11-year-old daughter with anorexia. “Anorexia usually appears in adolescence. And I was surprised by her such an early start. I asked the question: is there anyone in the family who was dying of hunger? It turned out that an 11-year-old girl died because of this in her relatives during the war, and no one ever talked about it.” Gluttony and anorexia are now literally an epidemic of these disorders. A systemic family psychologist will certainly lead a thread into the past, and most likely there will be something related to food or its absence. Sometimes the events of the past become a curse for the family.

“The group told me about a case when a man returned from the front. His wife was shot by the Germans, leaving a 12-year-old daughter. And the new wife refused to accept the girl – she ordered to send it anywhere. How they got rid of the girl is unknown. But suddenly, at the age of 12, the new wife’s own daughter dies. Subsequent pregnancies end in miscarriages, those children that were born, conflict, leave home. This is how the pain once inflicted can “revenge”.

When history gapes with voids, a lot of energy of the whole family and even those who are far from the root causes go into these black holes. Therefore, it is so important to seek, to ask those who still have at least some information. Even if at first the hypotheses seem crazy. But the causes of today’s descendants’ problems may be hidden in a great-grandfather’s memorial medallion, or in a mother’s song, or in old photographs in a family album, or a secret that everyone is silent about, but which breaks through decades in the strange behavior or illnesses of generation Z.

Repent and move on

“We need objects of identification, clear messages without spaces from ancestors. As a rule, our identity begins to stagger in moments of crisis. And if we have a healthy base, normal family support, we will cope more easily. When there is nothing to cling to and rely on, people still look for support – for example, in a church. But sometimes they start to engage in self-destruction,” states Natalya Olifirovich.

We can create such a support for our children if we tell them, without embellishment and cuts, what really happened. For example, about how great-grandfather came from the war, how he regretted that he had to kill people. The fact that he was forced to do this because he defended his homeland and loved ones.

But secrets must be revealed carefully and on time. There is another extreme, when terrible details are told in all the details that the child’s psyche cannot digest. And you can injure a child no less than not saying something.

“If we want a healthy generation, we must ensure a clear intergenerational transmission of information,” says the psychotherapist. To come to terms with a tragic history, we need to experience pain together. In a symbolic sense. Mourn, discuss with other relatives. We can talk to the great-grandfather-front-line soldier, if he is still alive, or go to his grave if he has already left us, and say:

“I know how much grief you had to go through. I know that it was not easy for you to make decisions. Our country is responsible for the blood of people, violence, the destruction of many people, including their compatriots. We didn’t start this war. But we have done many things that have led to tragedy and suffering for individuals. And we’re very sorry.”

Such joint repentance, Natalya Olifirovich believes, will help not only accept and endure pain, but also stop the tragic relay race between generations.