Human beings are not only individuals — we are inheritors. We carry with us not only our own experiences but also those of our ancestors, our communities, and our cultures. This idea lies at the heart of collective memory, a powerful force that shapes identity, behavior, and belief across generations. When that memory is rooted in trauma — war, genocide, colonization, displacement — it can live on in a community like an unhealed wound, shaping how people see the world and themselves.
Two groups, in particular, illustrate the devastating power of inherited trauma: the Jewish people, bearing the weight of the Holocaust, and the First Peoples of America, who carry the legacy of colonization and cultural destruction. Their histories are different in nature and context, but they share a common thread: a collective memory of profound suffering, and the psychological and social consequences that follow.
Collective Memory and Intergenerational Trauma
Memory, as we typically understand it, is personal — our individual recollection of events. But collective memory is different. It’s socially constructed and transmitted through stories, symbols, rituals, institutions, and even silences. It becomes part of a people’s identity. While not encoded in genes, it is embedded in family narratives, community traditions, and national myths.
Trauma, when experienced at the scale of genocide or cultural annihilation, doesn’t end with the original victims. It passes on, subtly and powerfully, through generations — not as specific memories, but as patterns of fear, anxiety, rage, and pain. This phenomenon, known as intergenerational trauma, is well-documented. It mirrors the psychological scars found in individuals who suffer abuse — the abused child becomes the anxious adult, possibly repeating cycles of harm or dysfunction, even without understanding the root.
In cultural terms, the same is true for entire peoples. Trauma, unacknowledged or unhealed, becomes a lens through which the world is perceived and reacted to.
The Jewish People and the Legacy of the Holocaust
The Holocaust remains one of the most searing episodes in human history. Six million Jews were murdered, not in random violence, but in a systematic attempt at annihilation. The trauma left in its wake was profound — not only in the lives of survivors, but in the psyche of the Jewish people worldwide.
This legacy has shaped Jewish identity with a central, existential vow: “Never again.” This is not merely a slogan but a worldview — a fierce commitment to survival and self-protection. For many, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 represented the embodiment of that vow: a safe homeland, free from the vulnerability of diaspora existence.
However, trauma doesn’t simply end with safety. It can harden into a siege mentality — a belief that the world is forever hostile, that threat is always imminent, and that extreme measures are justified for survival. In Israel, particularly amid ongoing conflict and regional hostility, this trauma has sometimes manifested in policies of aggression and control, most controversially in the treatment of Palestinians.
Following the Hamas atrocities of October 2023, Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza that resulted in immense devastation and a mounting civilian death toll. For many observers, the images of starving children, destroyed infrastructure, and displaced families evoke terrible memories — not of Hamas’s crimes, but of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. That resemblance is not precise, but it is symbolically powerful, creating a dissonance that has stirred global outrage.
A tragic paradox has emerged: a people scarred by genocide is now being accused — in some quarters — of perpetrating or enabling one. Whether or not one agrees with that accusation, the moral gravity of the moment cannot be denied. Collective trauma, once a source of ethical vigilance, may now be used to justify force and repression. In such cases, history becomes not a teacher, but a prison.
The First Peoples of America: Erasure, Survival, and Cultural Despair
In a different but equally tragic context, the First Peoples of North America endured their own form of genocide — not through gas chambers, but through massacres, disease, forced removals, boarding schools, and cultural erasure. Their lands were stolen, their identities criminalized, and their children taken from them and forced to assimilate.
The result has been a persistent legacy of cultural dislocation and emotional devastation. Many Indigenous communities suffer from disproportionately high rates of addiction, suicide, depression, and family breakdown. These are not “failures of character,” as racist stereotypes once suggested, but symptoms of intergenerational grief — passed down not through choice, but through centuries of institutional trauma.
Like Holocaust survivors, many Native families never spoke of their suffering. Silence became a coping mechanism. But unspoken pain doesn’t disappear — it seeps into behavior, relationships, and the body. Some Native communities refer to this as a soul wound — a deep, spiritual injury that cannot heal in the absence of cultural restoration, justice, and collective mourning.
The echoes are unmistakable: trauma becomes addiction, alienation, or aggression. A people uprooted from their past struggles to create a future. And yet, even amidst this despair, many Indigenous communities are now reviving languages, spiritual practices, and governance systems — reclaiming what was once denied, and healing through reconnection rather than revenge.
The Tragic Circle: When the Victim Becomes the Perpetrator — or the Forgotten
You observed, rightly, that in some ways history has come full circle. The Jewish people, once the ultimate victims of genocide, now find their national project linked to accusations of brutality. At the same time, anger at Israeli policy has contributed to a rise in antisemitism, including in the UK, where Jewish communities increasingly feel vulnerable — not because of anything they’ve done, but because of a conflation of identity with politics.
And the First Peoples, having suffered for centuries, are often overlooked altogether — their suffering not televised, their revival not widely supported, their trauma enduring in silence.
This circularity — of victimhood, aggression, backlash, and silence — is the great moral tragedy of trauma unhealed. The past becomes not a foundation for justice but a justification for harm. And when we fail to distinguish between people and governments, between memory and policy, between justice and vengeance, we risk repeating the very atrocities we once vowed never to allow again.
A Way Forward
Despite the pain, there is hope. History need not repeat if we listen, acknowledge, and resist the temptation to dehumanise. The trauma of the Jewish people can be honoured without excusing state violence. The pain of Palestinians can be recognised without denying Israel’s right to exist. The despair of Native Americans can be addressed through truth, cultural sovereignty, and reparative justice.
Ultimately, what ties these stories together is a simple, devastating truth: when trauma is denied or exploited, it spreads. When it is honoured and healed, it transforms. Memory can be a teacher, not a tormentor.
We are not doomed to relive the past — but only if we are brave enough to see it clearly, name its consequences, and choose a different path forward.
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