Elizabeth Rosner, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, tackled the topic of intergenerational pain from a personal perspective in her 2017 nonfiction book, “Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory.”
The Berkeley resident, who is also a novelist and poet, will speak Feb. 27 as part of Sonoma State University’s 41st annual Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series. This year’s theme is “Genocides: Past, Present, and Future?” Her talk is titled “Legacies of Trauma and Resilience: How the Past Lives Inside the Present.”
Rosner spoke with J. about the impact of language, how the use of certain words can trigger deep-seated feelings of fear and powerlessness, and how people can look within themselves to understand their reactions to fear, uncertainty and helplessness.
J.: As someone who has studied trauma and its impact across generations, what are your thoughts now about how the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre is affecting Jewish people in our community?
ER: One of the things that concerns me a lot is about how we’re using language. Words like “genocide,” words like “apartheid,” words like “colonialism” — those are being used in ways that are very upsetting to me, and very disturbing. I think there are a lot of people who are using them deliberately to stir up reactions. But I also think there are a lot of people just using them unconsciously, without really understanding their meaning and without really understanding the complexities of history.
I think what’s being lost is nuance and a sense of shared understanding. Trauma does that to people. A lot of the time trauma sets off our nervous systems in such a way that we feel a sense of threat that’s very physical in a way and not always rational.
So how do people get past that initial response?
If you’re using a word that makes me feel like my life is being threatened or my right to exist is being threatened, I can pause for a moment and say, “OK, let me ask you what you mean by that word?” I can drop away from the reactivity around the word.
That’s not always possible, but it can be one way to de-escalate a situation where everybody’s nervous systems are all fired up: It’s either your genocide or my genocide; it’s either your victimization or my victimization; it’s your feeling of being annihilated or my feeling of being annihilated. I think stepping out of that “either/or” dynamic is very hard right now. But it’s incredibly necessary.
Why do people get stuck in that binary?
It’s really hard to sit with uncertainty. It’s really hard to sit with the feeling that “terrible things are happening and I can’t stop them, and I want to know how to make that pain go away.”
I have a very hardwired tendency to react when people talk about “the Jews,” or use really generalized language about Israel or Zionists, or use the word “genocide,” or use the word “occupiers.” I have to take responsibility for being very reactive to that language.
[In those cases] I’m listening for tone, I’m looking at body language, but it’s also my job to check in with myself. Like, am I reacting to them? Or am I reacting to my historical experience?
Right at the beginning, right after Oct. 7, people very close to me were starting to say things like “From the river to the sea.” I wrote to them privately, not publicly. I said to them: “This hurts me personally to see you use that language because you may not know what it means to me to hear that. When I see that phrase, what it says to me is that Israel should not exist and Israel must be wiped off the map. And that frightens me.”
I had to say that in a really personal, intimate way to some people, rather than shouting back at them publicly. And, you know, several of them said thank you for not just blocking them or yelling at them in public or denouncing them in some way. A few of them stopped using the language — not all of them, sadly. But I had to do the work [on] myself first: “I’m feeling afraid right now. Oh, my God, I’m feeling really sad. Maybe they don’t know what that means. Maybe they’re using it in a way because they heard someone else use it and they thought it sounded like a great slogan.”
I feel like not that many people take that moment to really check in with their own feelings of fear.
Yeah, I agree. Because it’s hard. It’s actually really hard. It’s easier to not do it or to think that it’s on “them,” not on me.
I can only say that I think it’s important and that I’m going to do it when I can. And I’m hopefully going to inspire other people to do it. It’s why I write entire books about these things. Because I do give it a lot of thought. And I want other people — if they’re willing — to at least consider thinking about those things.