Throughout my life, people considered me to be a regular white male with an ethnic background and a sense of humour, indistinguishable from many Canadian men. But I have always felt different. Very different.

I’m a child of Holocaust survivors. I had traumatized parents who were left stateless and penniless after the WWII. With almost no extended family, I live in a world filled with ghosts. In fact I live in two worlds – in present day Canada and sometimes I’m back in the Holocaust.

Travelling between these two worlds is like going from day to night, from summer to winter, from freedom to prison. Too often it leaves me feeling adrift. I never spoke to anyone about how I felt. I held it inside but over time I realized that other children of Holocaust survivors felt the same way.

How are we different? We are higher risk for experiencing depression, anxiety and PTSD through exposure to our traumatized parents. We have few or no role models as many of us have no grandparents, aunts or uncles. This leads to rocky relationships with siblings and estrangement. We have a strange connection with family history. It’s typically unknown which creates a strong need to establish a family legacy. Many children write their parents’ or their own memoir.

We are often hypersensitive to threats duplicating our parents’ fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses. Not surprising we respond strongly to antisemitism and often are ready to fight back for fear of making the same mistakes as European Jewry during the 1930s. We are also much more susceptible to stressful events

We tend to be less materialistic because we know how easily property and possessions can be taken away from us. We are very protective of our parents who went through life changing experiences. Very often the roles are reversed even at very young ages.

The world feels like a very dangerous place. There are perceived threats everywhere. As a result, there is a strong attachment to Israel. Israel is considered a lifeline in the event our home country becomes too dangerous. We know very well that when the persecution of Jews began in 1933, there were no safe havens. Consequently we will not publicly criticize the Israeli government even when we disagree with it.