title: Confronting destruction: social context and life story in the diaries of two adolescents in eastern European ghettos during the shoah.
abstract: Life-writing, such as in diaries and memoirs, offers a means for managing misfortune and fosters an enhanced sense of self-coherence. The devastation that accompanied the effort by the Third Reich to destroy Europe's Jewish citizens challenged resilience, sense of personal agency, and the capacity to deal with personal loss and the destruction of community. The capacity for writing a coherent life story first emerges during adolescence. Reporting on the diaries of two adolescents living in Eastern European ghettos, this study considers the coping techniques that these adolescent diarists used even as they confronted their own demise. At the same time, the differing social contexts of the Łódź and Vilna ghettos posed somewhat different challenges to the resilience of these diarists. This study considers both life-writing and coping in the context both of adolescent psychological development and social context using Lazarus' portrayal of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping as conditions became ever more dire in each ghetto.
authors.affiliation: The University of Chicago, Comparative Human Development, 5730 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, USA. bert@uchicago.edu
authors.forename: Bertram J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Cohler
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005061:Europe, Eastern; D017767:Holocaust / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011204:Poverty Areas; D012931:Social Environment; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology