A new study states that the chances of a Holocaust survivor to commit suicide are 3.5 times higher than the elderly hospitalized population who were not exposed to Nazi persecution
A new study states that Holocaust survivors who are sick in their old age have a higher risk of suicide than other elderly sick people their age who are not Holocaust survivors.
The demographic growth of the elderly population, many of whom have experienced severe trauma in their lives, emphasizes the need to implement education and awareness strategies to limit the risk of suicide.
The research conducted by Prof. Yoram Barak, Prof. Dov Eisenberg, Dr. Henry Shor, Dr. Marnina Shortz, Dr. Rachel Maor and Dr. Haim Kano from the Abarbanal Hospital in Bat Yam affiliated to Tel Aviv University Aviv was published today in the prestigious American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
The researchers examined the question: does the exposure of a large population of Holocaust survivors to the horrors of the Nazi regime entail an increased risk of suicide.
From the research findings, it appears that the majority of Holocaust survivors continue to define the Holocaust period as "the most significant repressing factor in their lives" during their aging period, which is accompanied by a resurgence of trauma, depression and suicide.
The study included examining the medical records of elderly patients who were hospitalized at Abarbanal Hospital in Bat Yam during a period that lasted five years. Patients who attempted suicide before their hospitalization were compared to non-suicidal patients.
Out of 921 elderly patients who met the inclusion criteria, 374 were Holocaust survivors.
Out of 135 patients (14.6%) who tried to commit suicide before being hospitalized, there were 90 patients from Holocaust survivors
(24%) compared to 8.2% of the non-survivor patients.
The topic of the study arose following the words of Dr. Aharon Pertsikovich, a gynecologist from Tel Aviv, a senior member of the Dachau extermination camp, at the first conference "Spiritual Hygiene in the Jewish Community in Palestine" held in the winter of 1947 in Tel Aviv. Dr. Pertsikovich emphasized in his lecture on the "mental state of the new immigrant" - (a new immigrant was then defined as a Holocaust survivor who had just arrived in Israel) the "difference" of these immigrants from the immigrants who arrived in previous years.
Dr. Pritzkovitz's central argument, which became a kind of myth during the sixty years, was that the population of Holocaust survivors is characterized by a desire to live, saying "Holocaust survivors do not commit suicide, they heroically prove the continuity of the Jewish people." The research group headed by Prof. Barak tested for the first time this claim that has never been tested and/or proven and its findings as stated proved otherwise.
As part of this research, another claim was also made that proved that Jewish prisoners in the extermination camps committed suicide in significant numbers. Recently, one of the leading researchers in the field of the psychological impact of Nazi persecution estimated that the suicide rate in the German extermination camps was the highest ever reported in the history of the human race.
