Adult Education Session #7: Intergenerational Trauma

Scholarship around the lasting impacts of the Holocaust on survivors has been undertaken for decades. It is only recently that the effects of these events on subsequent generations has begun to be studied. Join Diana Wichtel, from the Auckland Second-Generation Group, and Ann Beaglehole, from the Wellington Second-Generation Group, as they discuss terminology, beliefs, and effects of growing up as the descendants of Holocaust survivors.

Ann Beaglehole Bio:
Ann Beaglehole is a historian and a writer. She was born in Hungary and came to New Zealand in 1957 after the Hungarian revolution against the former Soviet Union. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Much of her writing has been about refugee experiences and displacement. Her book Refuge New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2013) is a history of New Zealand’s response to refugees and asylum seekers from the 19th century until today. Ann’s novel Replacement Girl, about Hungarian refugees, has been published in English and in Hungarian. Her book Facing the Past: Looking Back at Refugee Childhood in New Zealand, (Allen and Unwin) is based on interviews with the adult children of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors who came to New Zealand before and after the Second World War. The book explores the diverse responses of families to immigration and to a traumatic past of loss, grief, humiliation and guilt.

Diana Wichtel Bio:
Diana lived in Canada until 1964, when her Kiwi mother brought her children to New Zealand. She never saw her father, a Polish Holocaust survivor, again. Diana was a feature writer and television critic for the New Zealand Listener for 36 years. In 2016 she was joint recipient of the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship, enabling her to write Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father. The book won the 2018 Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction, the E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award for General Non-Fiction and has been published in North America and Italy. Diana is a member of the Auckland Second Generation Group. She joined the HCNZ Board in 2020. She lives in Auckland with her partner, Chris Barton. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Register now (see the 'Tickets' website above).