Resilience

Year after year these snowdrops, tumbling down the tumbledown garden wall, come up in January, whatever the weather, and must have done so for decades before we arrived. After last night's violent thunder storms I noticed today that they were back.

It's been Holocaust Memorial Day.

Earlier in the week I read one woman's story * of surviving, as a teenager, four concentration camps in succession. I often wonder what gives some individuals the resilience to emerge from experiences like this and to make new lives for themselves, as she did - to work, love, create and raise a family. Many survivors did not. Long before PTSD was identified as a condition requiring attention and treatment there were uncountable numbers who were left permanently scarred, who failed to prosper or who perished in one way or another in the aftermath of the trauma, or whose experience took its toll in later life.

Henia Bryer is remarkable for her lack of bitterness and her refusal to dwell on the past but she regrets the dwindling knowledge about the meaning of the concentration camp number tattooed on her arm. When, as a student, I went to work on a kibbutz in Israel most of the older generation of residents had such tattoos. Now some of their grandchildren are adopting the same tattooed numbers as a way of perpetuating the memory and celebrating the resilience of the survivors - see a wonderful photogallery here.

*In the UK it's also possible to see a TV documentary about Henia Bryer here.