As far back as the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Holocaust survivors
became a presence in Eretz Israeli documentary cinema. They continue to appear in
Israeli cinema until the present. In the initial period from 1945 until the 1960s, films,
as was the case for other facets of Eretz-Israeli/Israeli culture, emphasized the Zionist
lessons of the Holocaust and centered on the national collective transformation of
Holocaust survivors from “ashes to renewal.”1 Events such as the Eichmann trial of
1961 and political and social upheavals in the twenty years that followed led to a
change in the way survivors were depicted.2 Documentaries produced in the 1960s
and 1970s began dealing with the Jewish past in the diaspora and with the Holocaust
itself in greater depth; by the late 1980s, they were exploring such issues as how survivors dealt with post-trauma and the transgenerational transfer of trauma to survivors’
children.3 This essay will focus on the representation of second-generation Holocaust
survivors in Israeli documentary cinema from the 1980s onwards. It will first introduce
the major psychological schools regarding second-generation Holocaust survivors
and will then show how the films reflect only those schools that highlight the separate
and unique features of children growing up in families of Holocaust survivors.