Survivor's+Guilt

Survivor guilt/survivor syndrome is the mental condition that results from the appraisal that a person has done wrong by surviving traumatic events such as combat, natural disasters, or even surviving a lay-off in a work place. - Wikipedia defintion. Many people have been affected by this illness, especially in past prison camps, such as Manzanar, Auschwitz, etc. The survivor feels guilty because they survived, or escaped something that others could not. The person then feels guilty for coming out of the situation, successful or not.

In __Farewell To Manzanar__, Jeanne Wakatasuki speaks of her experience in the Japanese relocation camp, and recalls the feelings produced by the imprisonment and poor treatment she and her family received during World War II. She looks back on the shame she felt, developed directly from the mistreatment she encountered in Manzanar.____ "As I came to understand what Manzanar had meant, it gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment. In order to please my accusers, I tried, for the first few years after our release, to become someone acceptable" (Wakatasuki 185). Jeanne Wakatasuki felt guilty of her ancestry because of the way America had treated her and her country for that matter, by banishing Japanese Americans into a relocation camp.

Jeanne Wakatasuki Houston carried the self-condemnation and shame left over as she grew up as well, and it slowly faded throughout the years of her adulthood. "I had nearly outgrown the shame and the guilt and the sense of unworthiness. The visit, this pilgrimage, made comprehensible, finally, the traces that remained and would always remain, like a needle. The hollow ache i carried during the early months of internment had shrunk over the years, to a tiny sliver of suspicion about the very person I was. It had grown so small sometimes I forgot it was there. Months might pass before something would remind me" (Wakatasuki 185). Attendants of Manzanar, as well as other relocation and/or prison camps suffered from this disease, and struggled to triumph over their guilt from their oppression.

In German prison camps, many of the prisoners felt this as well during and after their release. One woman, Rose F, reflects on how she had believed herself to be responsible for her sister's death in Auschwitz prison camp. "I felt guilty for many years that maybe I should have run back and tried to get her with me or stay with her. Maybe I didn't do enough to stay together. Maybe I was too selfish about saving myself. You can excuse yourself and say if I had run back my fate would have been the same as hers. There is no logic to my feelings.. but those words ring in my ears, "If you're not going to eat, you're going to die" (Aaron Hass). Although Rose knew in her mind that she was not accountable for the death of her sister, she still felt responsible because she survived and her sister did not.

Survivor's guilt syndrome is a mental illness that affects a victim who overcomes a life-altering experience, for years and years after the ordeal occurs. It is a psychological condition which causes a person to feel personal shame for something they survived, where as others could not.

This is a creative example of how one thinks when afflicted with survivor's guilt. It is expressed through a journal.



Photo Credit: http://home.earthlink.net/~fearnotrout/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/miyatakeboys.jpeg

Citing: Houston, Jeanne Wakatasuki, and James D. Houston. __Farewell to Manzanar.______New York: Laurel-Leaf, 1973. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor%27s_guilt http://www.holocaust-trc.org/glbsurv.htm

Jessica Rozek