r/Judaism • u/justjust000 • Jan 20 '26

We're what's left 😄

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Link to original Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQJ3AkViofr

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u/Remarkable-Pea4889 Jan 20 '26

I wouldn't wear a shirt like this, but it's actually somewhat true. Research has shown that to survive the Holocaust people needed to be selfish rather than selfless.

15

u/Sensitive-Inside-250 Jan 20 '26

What research?

22

u/Remarkable-Pea4889 Jan 20 '26

For example, Survivorship and Shame: Tracing the Affective Afterlife of the Holocaust.

For some, this shame stems from the unshakeable understanding that they survived when many others did not, while for others this shame is caused by the their actions during the war which they now understand as wrong or corrupt, such as carrying out acts of perpetration towards other prisoners, using sex and prostitution as a survival tool, and acting in selfish and inhumane ways.

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/view/22032/16400

12

u/crazysometimedreamer Reform Jan 21 '26

I’m a cancer survivor. I feel a great deal of sadness that I’ve known so many people with “lower stage, easier to treat, better prognosis” died. I even feel this way about people in their 60s and 70s and 80s, and I was in my 30s.

I can also guarantee you that nothing I did helped me get an edge to survive. I just did the treatment I was given. I did not have a positive attitude. I remember meeting people and thinking why I had to be the one to have the hard cancer. Or be so young. I’d have dark thoughts in support groups when people were going on about not enjoying their retirement cause they had cancer in their 70s when they’d lived 4 more decades that I was likely going to get. (And then I’d feel horrible because cancer always sucks.)

I watched people with easier cancers, a personal relationship with their God, supportive family, gym memberships, vegan organic food eaters, money, and positive attitudes get struck down while I didn’t.

I know I did nothing special and they did nothing special, it was blind chance who lived and who died. But, I still feel guilty, like I somehow cheated.

Survivorship guilt is real.