By Jerry Elman

June 16, 2025

This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever written—but also one of the most necessary. It’s important for me—to finally give voice to what’s lived silently inside me for so long. It’s important for others like me to know they’re not alone. And it’s important for those around us who misunderstand what we’re going through to begin to see it clearly.

I wrote this because I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand my demons—especially since writing Miracles Through Hell. That book opened a door I didn’t know needed opening. At first, it was meant to tell my parents’ Holocaust survival story—the terror, the courage, the impossible odds they endured. But somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t just telling their story. I was uncovering my own. What began as a journey into their past became a journey into my own survival. And with that discovery came an unexpected unraveling—of beliefs I held about myself, of stories I had buried, and of pain I didn’t know I was still carrying. I began to see that their survival had shaped mine in ways I had never acknowledged. And that story needed to be told, too.

Since then, writing has become something I enjoy. But it’s taken me three years to write this one article—because it’s been personal, risky, vulnerable, and self-revealing. Over that same time I’ve poured myself into blog articles, presentations, and work on a second book. But lately, I’ve started to wonder if it’s also become a kind of crutch—a way to stay busy without confronting the deeper healing I still need. Writing helps me process—but it can also be a form of hiding. A way to channel the pain without truly facing it. Maybe writing has become a safer substitute for doing—the same way silence once was.

After years of telling the historical truths of my family’s past, I’ve realized it’s time to bring that same honesty to the present—not just to memory, but to the ongoing work of recovery and connection. Because I am not alone.

Not alone as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Not alone in living with depression and the weight it brings. If you’re reading this and nodding quietly to yourself, you’re not alone either.

A Childhood That Shifted

In early childhood, I was a normal kid. That often gets lost. I loved school. I was curious. I had friends. I raised my hand constantly and thrived on attention. I was outgoing and bright. But something changed.

My mother—once nurturing and affectionate—grew bitter. The life she had dreamed of as a child, a life stolen from her during the Holocaust, twisted into resentment. She had survived by hiding with her family, moving from one barn or attic to the next, through winters so brutal they still haunt the imagination. But she never got to be a teenager. Never got to dream. And when she looked at me, enjoying my childhood, she saw everything she had lost.

She was angry that I had it “too good.” That I could smile, or laugh, or have fun. Her trauma turned into blame. And I changed too—from a bright, extroverted boy into a guilt-ridden, withdrawn, confused introvert. I didn’t understand why. I just knew something inside me broke.

My father was different. He had lived through hell as a partisan fighter in the forests of Belarus, yet carried himself with quiet strength. He didn’t lash out. He didn’t burden me with his pain. But he didn’t talk either. Neither of them did. Like so many survivors, they locked their trauma deep inside and tried to build a new life around it.

The Legacy of Silence

And this isn’t just personal—it’s documented. Studies show that second-generation Holocaust survivors are at significantly higher risk for anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Some studies show nearly double the national average. And researchers have even found changes in stress-regulation genes like FKBP5 and NR3C1, suggesting trauma can leave a biological imprint—passed silently from one generation to the next.

My mother had classic PTSD—but no one used that word then. What we saw instead were her triggers: the sudden shifts, the cold silence, the sharp outbursts. Holidays were hard. Crowds made her anxious. If we were too happy or too loud, something in her would snap.

She had lived like prey for years. And that trauma never left her body. It seeped into our home like gas—colorless, odorless, deadly.

Love was tangled up with fear. Joy felt dangerous. Relaxing felt selfish. Her unspoken pain became the background noise of my life.

It wasn’t just our home. Her behavior pushed away what little family we had left. Relationships splintered. The isolation deepened. It didn’t just affect my childhood—it shaped how I experienced closeness, relationships, trust. It became my blueprint.

I didn’t know the names of the people we lost. I didn’t know their stories. There were no heirlooms, no rituals, no photographs—just fragments. Just silence.

Rejection by Your Own People

Here’s something that’s hard to admit: some of the deepest pain didn’t come from strangers—it came from fellow Jews.

As a child, I never felt like I belonged in the synagogue we attended. Instead of community, I found judgment. Kids mocked my family for being different—for our accents, our clothing, our background. My mother was humiliated when she participated in the temple sisterhood. My father, a Holocaust survivor who worked with his hands as a junk dealer, was dismissed and ridiculed. In Hebrew school, kids mocked me, calling me the son of a “junkman”—a label that carried more scorn than anyone seemed to realize. The teachers did nothing. Their parents obviously thought it was acceptable too.

My mother developed a bitterness toward American Jews, seeing their treatment not as acceptance—but as quiet segregation of survivors. They treated her as different—and damaged. She had no higher education. She had an accent. She represented a generation of Jews that didn’t fit the narrative of upwardly mobile American Jewish success. Survivors had to create their own Jewish communities among themselves. They became known as the Greena—Yiddish for “new,” just starting out.

I viewed fellow Jews as cruel. I found non-Jews far more accepting. All of my friends were non-Jews. I was accepted and welcomed at my friends’ Christmas dinners—but not with Jewish kids for Jewish holidays. It was a strange kind of exile—feeling more at home at a Christmas dinner than at a Passover seder.

And while the Jewish community often said Never Forget, many survivors were viewed more as obstacles to assimilation than people in need of support. Holocaust survivors were seen as reminders of a past that many American Jews were trying to distance themselves from. Second-generation survivors like me were caught in the middle—different, and treated differently, without understanding why. We grew up absorbing pain we didn’t yet have words for, sensing that we didn’t quite belong even among our own.

The Jewish community wanted the stories of Holocaust survivors—as proof, as defense, as a way to fight antisemitism. But they often didn’t want the survivors themselves, or the emotional aftermath we carried. Those stories were collected late, often only after they became culturally acceptable, even trendy. It made the community feel better. But did it help the survivors? Did it help their children? I’m not so sure.

Even as an adult, that wound never fully healed. I found a synagogue community later in life that I believed, for many years, embraced me. But in the end, when I needed emotional support the most, I received judgment and rejection. I left the synagogue in November 2018. The synagogue experience brought me to the edge. It was the closest I ever came to taking my life. And it’s a time I still struggle to let go of. The hurt never goes away—especially remembering how close the consequences came. Instead of asking if I was okay, they chose judgment. And punishment. To this day, people walk away from me when they see me in public.

Becoming Myself—and the Cost of It

But becoming myself took a toll.

After restarting therapy in 2000—a turning point that helped me begin shedding the mask—I started speaking up with my true thoughts and opinions. That therapy helped me reconnect with parts of myself I had long buried, especially the quiet strength I had seen in my father. I began to realize that the part of him I had admired—the steady, grounded presence—was also inside me, just hidden beneath layers of fear and self-doubt. That realization helped me shift how I showed up in the world.

I did less to please others. And that got me in trouble—at work and in other places. I was no longer the pleaser. I pushed back. I disagreed. And people didn’t like that. In many ways, I began to embody the quiet resilience my father had modeled, rather than the anxious people-pleasing that had defined so much of my earlier life. It hurt the remainder of my career. And it too was exhausting.

I started to take risks—some that I’m proud of, some that nearly broke me. I began sharing my truth with others—through writing, public speaking, and conversations I never would have had before. But with each step forward came new consequences. Some people didn’t want to hear it. Some walked away. Some acted like I had betrayed them—simply by refusing to keep hiding.

Depression doesn’t go away just because you’ve learned its roots. If anything, the more you understand it, the more it reveals how deep it goes. Therapy helped. Writing helped. But the weight remained. There are good days and bad days. Times I feel strong, and times I feel like I’m barely hanging on. The darkness still visits. The triggers still return. The scars don’t vanish just because you’ve stopped hiding them.

And healing is not linear. It comes in waves. Sometimes you feel like you’ve moved past it—and then it crashes over you again, just as hard.

What I’ve learned is this: being yourself, fully and unapologetically, often comes at a cost. You lose people. You face judgment. You see who really listens—and who only stayed close when you stayed silent.

But you also find something else. You find truth. You find clarity. You find others who see you—not just the version you performed, but the person you actually are. And slowly, painfully, that becomes enough.

A Culture That Punishes Vulnerability

We live in a culture that doesn’t know what to do with vulnerability. It talks about mental health in headlines and hashtags, but when someone actually speaks up—really speaks up—most people get uncomfortable. They look away. They offer clichés. They blame. Or worse, they go silent.

When I’ve opened up about my depression, or about inherited trauma, some people pull closer—but most back away. They don’t want the weight. They don’t want the responsibility of caring. Or maybe they’re afraid of seeing themselves in my story. Either way, vulnerability is punished. Subtly. Quietly. But punished all the same.

This isn’t just a personal pattern. It’s everywhere. We reward people for strength, for performance, for hiding their pain behind achievement. But if you falter—if you grieve too loudly, if you speak of things too real—people scatter. They call it drama. Or weakness. Or attention-seeking. The truth is, we are a society that would rather applaud someone for surviving silently than support someone who is breaking openly.

And here’s something else: don’t be the person who’s always focused on being right—on proving others wrong, on needing to win instead of connect. Especially when it comes to depression, don’t assume your approach is the fix. It’s not as simple as telling someone to be more active, take on a hobby, exercise, or just “do something.” And don’t scold someone for “checking out”—you’ll only make them feel worse, and retreat even deeper. Depression is not a debate. It’s not a contest of opinions, or a war over personal theories about laziness or willpower. It’s not about not wanting to be okay. It’s a human condition. It lives in the space where empathy should be—but too often isn’t.

If someone had a broken leg, you wouldn’t tell them to get up and run a mile to feel better. You wouldn’t tell them that moving around or getting out more would fix it. You’d recognize they’re in pain. You’d help. You’d show understanding.

But that same basic compassion often disappears when the pain is emotional. When someone is suffering from depression, people say things they would never say to someone with a physical injury. “Just push through it.” “Be stronger.” “Stop being so dramatic.” Instead of comfort, they get judgment. Instead of support, they get silence—or worse, blame.

And here’s the truth: people understand severe physical pain. When someone is seriously injured or dying and the pain becomes unbearable, most people understand the desire to end that pain. But they don’t understand that emotional pain can be just as excruciating. Just as real. Just as unbearable. The only difference is—it’s invisible.

Every person has a threshold. A red line. A breaking point where the pain inside becomes so intense that ending life feels like the only way to stop it. It happens quickly. Quietly. Without warning. Without drama.

Everyone who suffers from depression thinks about suicide. Not just once. All the time. Some create a plan, just in case. Some reach that line and back away. And some—heartbreakingly—cross it, because the pain has overtaken everything else.

People have said to me, “How could you, the child of Holocaust survivors, ever think about ending your life?” As if survival were some kind of shield. As if being born from trauma should make me stronger, not more vulnerable. But they don’t understand—I live with my parents’ strength and their survival every day. And I also live with their pain. Inherited pain. Silent pain. Pain that shaped my wiring before I even had words. Sometimes, that pain becomes so heavy it crushes everything else. And when it does, even legacy and love can feel too far away to hold onto.

And to those who call it selfish—think about it. We put animals down when they’re suffering, when their pain becomes too much to bear. But when a human being is in that kind of pain—mental or physical—we don’t offer mercy. We offer shame. We call them weak or selfish. We abandon them. When in reality, they’ve just been holding on longer than most people ever will.

Children, teenagers, adults, veterans. Suicide is at record levels. And people act surprised. Even the experts claim they don’t know why. But anyone suffering from depression knows why. It’s about pain. It’s about the weight you carry. And when the pain is worse than life itself, there is only one way out.

Society today is cruel. Empathy is seen as weakness. Cruelty is rewarded as strength. People are demonized for the smallest reasons. And social media—where everyone is watching and judging—just magnifies it all. The emotional explosion we see online is not some mystery. It’s the echo of real people breaking under the pressure of isolation, judgment, and shame.

And the answer? It’s clear. But no one wants to accept it. Because that would mean accepting their role in someone else’s despair. Their silence. Their abandonment. Their inability—or refusal—to simply ask, “Are you okay?”

Finding My Way Back to Myself

It took decades before I started to feel like I could live as myself—not just function, but actually be who I am. That didn’t come from success or validation. It came from collapse. From hitting a point where hiding was no longer sustainable.

I spent so much of my life trying to be what others wanted—especially in the Jewish world I thought would embrace me. I played the part. I followed the rules. I smiled when I was supposed to. But inside, I was crumbling. And eventually, my body and mind stopped cooperating with the act.

Only then did I begin to understand that healing doesn’t happen through pleasing others. It happens through truth. And truth isn’t always pretty. It’s messy. It’s painful. It burns things down. But what’s left—if you’re lucky—is real.

For me, that truth began to take shape in therapy, in deep reflection, and in writing. Writing gave me back my voice. It gave shape to pain that had long been formless. It allowed me to say what had been unspeakable for years—even decades. It let me scream in a way that didn’t scare people. It let me be heard, even by those who weren’t listening.

But writing alone isn’t healing. Healing requires connection. And connection requires risk. I’ve taken that risk in recent years—in public talks, in conversations, in this very article. And while it’s brought more rejection than I’d like to admit, it’s also brought moments of real, human connection—people who have pulled me aside after a talk, or written to say: “I thought I was the only one.”

That’s what keeps me going. That’s what makes the pain worth writing through. Knowing that someone else might feel less alone.

I’m still learning how to live with the shadows. I don’t pretend they’re gone. I’ve stopped expecting to be “cured.” That’s not how this works. Depression, trauma, inherited pain—they don’t just vanish. But they can be named. They can be shared. And in doing that, they lose some of their power.

And I’ve found something else, too: underneath the weight, there is still light. Still life. Still laughter. Still love. It may not be easy. It may not come often. But when it does, it’s real. And that—maybe more than anything—is what I hold onto now.

What I Want You to Know

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I didn’t write this for attention. I didn’t write it for pity. I wrote it because silence almost destroyed me. And I know I’m not the only one carrying that weight.

I wrote this for the children of survivors who still can’t explain why they feel broken, even though they didn’t live through the war. I wrote it for anyone who grew up in a house filled with ghosts—where the walls were quiet, but nothing felt safe.
I wrote it for the people who’ve been told they’re too sensitive, too much, too emotional, too angry, or that they “check out” too often—when really, they’ve been carrying generations of unspoken pain in silence.
And I wrote it for the people who have hurt others without meaning to, simply because they didn’t understand. Maybe now you will.

I know I’m not easy. I know I’ve said things that made people uncomfortable. I’ve made mistakes.

But I’m still here.

And maybe, so are you.