Healing generations: inside a Santa Fe group for Shoah descendants
In the adobe light of northern New Mexico, a small gathering unfolds each fortnight in a Santa Fe therapist's office. The participants carry something they did not live through yet cannot escape — the gravity of the Holocaust passed down through parents who survived or escaped, and grandparents who witnessed the unthinkable. The therapist, a Jewish clinician shaped by her own family history, holds the room not to relive atrocity but to make space for the quiet, often unnamed echoes it leaves behind.
Across the Pacific, Jewish communities in Sydney and Melbourne have long recognised this same phenomenon. In places like Bondi and Caulfield, grandchildren of survivors meet in living rooms and shules, sharing stories over flat whites and lamington recipes. Their conversations echo the work unfolding in Santa Fe: how does a person live fully in the present while carrying the imprint of a history they never directly experienced?
The weight of inherited memory
The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors — sometimes called the third generation or "G3" — grew up with parents whose childhoods were fractured by genocide. Even when survivors spoke openly of their experiences, certain silences persisted. Other families avoided the topic altogether, leaving the next generation to puzzle over shadows and inherited anxiety without a vocabulary to name them.
Therapists working in this field draw on concepts like transgenerational trauma and post-memory to describe how trauma can shape identity, attachment patterns, and worldview without the bearer having witnessed the original event. A young adult in Adelaide might find herself inexplicably anxious in crowded places, only to discover her grandmother survived the Warsaw Ghetto. A teenager in Perth might feel compelled to visit Auschwitz, drawn by a pull he cannot fully articulate. These are not random symptoms but threads of a larger tapestry.
The therapist in Santa Fe sees her role as helping people recognise those threads. Her Jewish background matters here, not as a credential of insider status but as a shared cultural fluency. She understands what it means to sit at a Seder table where the Four Questions are followed by stories of hiding, escape, or loss. That familiarity lets participants feel seen without having to translate their family history into generic therapeutic language.
Inside the group space
The group she leads is intentionally small, usually eight to twelve participants meeting every other week. Sessions blend structured conversation with open-ended exploration. Members often arrive with a feeling they want to name and leave with a slightly clearer sense of where it sits within their family narrative.
Themes that recur across sessions include:
- The pressure of being the "last" generation with a living memory link, and the fear that speaking about the Shoah will become merely academic
- Differences between families where survivors were emotionally expressive and those who withdrew into stoic silence
- Navigating Jewish identity in places where Jewish life is a minority experience, whether in Santa Fe, regional Australia, or rural America
- Guilt about having grown up in comfort while family members suffered
Members frequently describe the group as the first space where they have met peers who share this specific inheritance. Friendships formed in the room often extend beyond sessions, with participants gathering for Shabbat dinners, hikes in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, or simply long phone calls when a news event triggers old feelings.
Generational healing models at a glance
Different therapeutic communities have developed varied approaches to supporting descendants of survivors. The Santa Fe group sits within a broader ecosystem, and understanding how its approach compares to other models can help readers find the right fit.
| Approach | Setting | Focus | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Fe group with Jewish clinician | Small private practice cohort | Identity integration, narrative sharing, intergenerational patterns | Ongoing, often 2+ years |
| Community-based peer circles | Shules, JCCs, casual settings | Mutual support, less clinical framing | Variable, often informal |
| Trauma-specific clinical therapy | Hospital or outpatient mental health | Symptom reduction, PTSD-style interventions | Time-limited, often 12–24 sessions |
| Holocaust-specific intensive programs | International conferences, retreats | Education combined with facilitated processing | Short-term, immersive |
The table illustrates that no single model serves everyone. Some descendants of survivors thrive in peer-led settings where the emphasis is on belonging rather than diagnosis. Others benefit from clinical frameworks that name anxiety, depression, or sleep disturbance with precision.
Jewish life in the high desert
Santa Fe might seem an unlikely centre for this kind of work, but the city has a small yet resilient Jewish community that punches above its demographic weight. The town hosts a historic mikvah, a Chabad centre, and a Reform congregation whose members include artists, retirees, and those drawn to the southwestern landscape. Jewish life here is woven into the broader regional tapestry of adobe architecture, Pueblo neighbours, and a thriving arts scene.
The therapist often partners with local rabbis and educators to bring descendant programming into broader community events. Yom HaShoah commemorations in Santa Fe draw participants from across northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, creating natural bridges between the clinical work and the wider Jewish calendar. For grandchildren of survivors, hearing the names of lost relatives read aloud in a New Mexico synagogue can be as therapeutic as any session.
This integration of clinical and communal life reflects a wider trend in Jewish communities worldwide. In Melbourne's Caulfield neighbourhood, similar partnerships between therapists and synagogues have produced hybrid models combining pastoral care with professional mental health support. The geographic distance between these communities dissolves when the questions people bring are recognisably shared.
Why group work resonates
Individual therapy has its place, but the group format offers something distinct for descendants of survivors. Many participants have spent decades believing their anxiety, their hypervigilance, or their complicated feelings about Jewish identity are personal flaws rather than family inheritances. Hearing peers describe the same experiences breaks that isolation in a way that individual work rarely replicates.
Members frequently describe benefits that include:
- Normalisation through recognition, where unusual family patterns are reflected back by peers rather than diagnosed by a clinician
- Collective witnessing, where members bear witness to each other's stories in ways family sometimes cannot provide
- Cultural anchoring, where Hebrew and Yiddish language, Jewish texts, and shared holiday rhythms become therapeutic resources rather than incidental context
In a culture that often expects descendants to "move on" from events they never lived through, the group insists on the legitimacy of their grief and their questions. Participants use Hebrew and Yiddish words freely, reference Jewish texts, and draw on shared calendar rhythms to process their inheritance. The therapist's fluency in these references helps participants feel that their full selves are welcome in the room. A participant originally from Brisbane once told the group that being able to say "Hashem" without translating felt like finally putting down a heavy bag she had been carrying through airports for years.
Lessons that travel well
The Santa Fe experience carries implications far beyond New Mexico. Jewish communities in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere grapple with the same generational questions as the third generation ages into leadership roles within their congregations and communal organisations. Sydney's great concrete synagogue buildings and smaller communities in places like Hobart or Darwin all face the challenge of supporting descendants whose needs differ from those of earlier waves of Holocaust-aware Jews.
Australian practitioners have begun establishing their own descendants' groups, often in partnership with organisations such as the Sydney Jewish Museum or community health services in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The work in Santa Fe offers a model without being prescriptive. Its lessons include the importance of clinician cultural fluency, the value of long-term group continuity, and the wisdom of integrating clinical practice with Jewish communal life.
For readers curious about connecting with similar work in New Mexico or wishing to learn more about community programming, the New Mexico Jewish Link welcomes enquiries from those interested in intergenerational healing initiatives.
Anyone walking out of the Santa Fe group on a winter evening carries something changed, even if they cannot yet name it. The sky above the Sangre de Cristos is wide and pink, and the work continues not because the past can be undone, but because the living deserve to inherit more than silence.