This wire-service photo was taken on April 19, 1943, the day of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
AP file
IF YOU GO
What: 2025 Day of Remembrance survivors’ trauma experiences
Who: Dr. Harold Koplewicz
When: April 24, 7-9 p.m. Doors open 6:30 p.m.
Where: The Atlantis, Reno
Register: https://nvholocaustcouncil.org/dofr2025
An internationally known child and adult psychiatrist who is also the president of the Child Mind Institute and editor of a professional journal is speaker for Tuesday’s 2025 Day of Remembrance presentation in Reno.
Dr. Harold Koplewicz, an expert on survivors’ experiences and the trauma arising from the Holocaust, will speak at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa from 7-9 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Nevada Governor’s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust, Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, Jewish Nevada and OLLI at the Sanford Center for Aging, part of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.
The 72-year-old Koplewicz, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Child and Adult Psychopharmacology, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He also has a unique relationship with Judith Schumer, the longtime co-chair of the Holocaust Day of Remembrance. Their friendship extends to the years after World War II when their families lived diagonally across the hall from each other on the fourth floor of a New York City apartment. They have remained in contact as good friends for decades.
“My father was in 14 concentration camps and survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and my mother walked out of the ghetto with false papers as a Catholic,” Koplewicz said of his parents.
His father was in law school in 1936 and also when the war broke out three years later. Koplewicz said Schumer’s family, the Elbaums, was able to see the situation unravel in Poland and took advantage of the opportunity to jump over to the Russian side to survive when the Soviets stormed into eastern Poland and occupied Warsaw.
The Elbaum family traveled to the Soviet Union and then to Shanghai, China, where Judith was born in October 1945. Her family immigrated to the United States.
“Our relationship is the most unique from any speaker she’s had,” Koplewicz proclaimed. “My parents came to this country in 1949 and lived in Brooklyn in what he called a fourth-floor walkup (an apartment reachable from only stairs and no elevator).”
Their reacquaintance to each other, though, occurred by chance when Schumer was listening to the popular PBS radio program Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross. Koplewicz said he was discussing generation trauma with Gross, whom he said was intrigued with the information.
“She (Judith) called me and told me I think you have arrived,” he laughed. “Being on Terry Gross, she realized I could be a speaker in Nevada.”
Koplewicz’s topic on trauma is one that follows from generation to generation although most of the survivors from the World War II era have died; yet, he pointed out, it’s important not to have history repeat itself.
Certain events, though, trigger reactions. Oct. 7, 2023 was very chilling for many Jews, but Koplewicz felt the incidents from that day are all connected to the Holocaust. That October day almost 18 months ago resulted in the worst mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. Reports indicated more than 1,000 people were killed in Hamas attacks.
Over time, Koplewicz said the day’s horror will filter down to generations, yet over time, that trauma may lessen but is not forgotten.
“The trauma doesn’t end with the person who experienced it,” he said. “It rippled through families touching the children, the grandchildren and sometimes an entire community.”
Koplewicz said incidences parallel others, which can be just as devasting to people and communities. As a New Yorker, he remembers Sept. 11, 2001, when two jets slammed into the World Trade Center. The effects of that day when almost 3,000 people died, including first responders, will follow generations of families.
Compared to the generations who followed World War II, Koplewicz said the United States is much more diverse.
“The fact there are actually signs that support the whole theory of EfFORT genetics tells us extreme trauma can leave a chemical marker DNA,” he said. “That’s a breakthrough in the 20 years.”
Koplewicz expanded on that breakthrough, saying a person could be more vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder. He said these alterations passed down to future generations are following the biological effect of trauma that’s inherited, but not the psychological one which you (a person) understands.”
As a child, Koplewicz said he remembers his father having horrible nightmares on a regular basis with “pieces and fragments of stories of what happened to my grandparents.”
Closer to home and within the last 25 years, Koplewicz points to the trauma associated with the attacks on Sept. 11 when he picked up his wife and children, and they left Manhattan to their country cabin.
“It was a danger, and we had to leave,” he said when they left Manhattan. “Twenty-four hours later, we drove back to Manhattan.”
Koplewicz said people carry grief that’s not theirs and sometimes from unspoken, silent or fragmented stories. He said there’s another side to the stories and the resilience people develop.
“If you’re fortunate to have parents who live to a ripe old age, you get to think you had different parents because they moved so far away from the trauma,” he said
Koplewicz said people have the ability to survive horrific abuse and other terrible situations, and from that, they develop posttraumatic resilience. Furthermore, he said people encounter the teachings and lessons at some time in their lives, whether it’s studying a story from that era, such as the Dairy of Anne Frank, visiting the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., or traveling to Europe to tour Auschwitz, one of the most notorious concentration camps and extermination centers.
The tours of the concentration camps continue to educate the world and the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
“The majority of people who visit Auschwitz are not Jewish,” Koplewicz added.
To register for this free Holocaust Day of Remembrance and Dr. Koplewicz event, you must register first at tinyurl.com/DofR2025 before you can be admitted.