Dr. Nathan Peretz Durst

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/breaking-through-the-loneliness-...

A couple of months ago, he gave a eulogy at the funeral of his sister's daughter. "I noted that my sister Hanna and I were the only ones who remained after World War II," recounted Nathan Durst. "I sadly concluded that now, 71 years later, we have both lost our children and that, once more, we are the only ones left."

Durst, an Israeli trauma psychologist who cofounded the Amcha organization, which provides psychological and other support to Holocaust survivors and their families, lost his two sons to cystic fibrosis: Moshe died in 1983, at age 23, and Yasha, 10 years later, at 30. The hereditary disease also killed his sister Hanna Fride-Durst's eldest son, a decade ago.

When her daughter Esther-Chaja died of cancer this past December, Hanna and Nathan found themselves alone once again, as they were in 1939 when their parents put them on a train from Berlin to the Netherlands, hoping they could make it from there to England or to the United States. Nathan was 8, Hanna 17; they were sent without papers, so they would not be identified as Jews, and also without luggage or money that could be stolen while they traveled. Two other sisters, Fanny, 15, and Janny, 12, followed shortly thereafter, but never made it to safety; upon their arrival in Holland, the sisters were reported to police by the first person they encountered, and were immediately sent back to Germany. Along with their parents, they were murdered at Auschwitz, sometime in 1942.

Although he has lived in Israel for four decades, Durst, who is now the deputy chairman of Amcha, still considers himself Dutch, the Netherlands was his home from the end of the war until his arrival in Israel, in 1970.

We met in the north German port of Kiel, where the German War Child Association (founded five years ago to assist people born in Germany between 1930 and 1940) had invited him to talk about the way Amcha helps Holocaust survivors and their families in Israel. His talk was to be held in the language he spoke the first nine years of his life: German.

For the young Nathan (or Nico, as he called himself when he and his sister lived in various hiding places in the Netherlands), the war period was a series of episodes of escape and hiding, and years of nonstop fear and anxiety. After the war ended, he says, "I was 14 and everyone was happy and felt liberated, but I did not know how to handle this freedom and had nothing to rejoice about."

During his high-school years, in Amsterdam he became involved in the Jewish Tikvatenu youth group, which offered him some solace. "I was allowed to be a child again with other children and found a sense of love that I had lost. These children loved me, and I loved them. This was my emotional salvation."

When Durst was 29, he finally decided what he really wanted to do: study psychology. By then, he was already married and had children. Despite the lack of certain preliminary training, he was admitted to a university program - provided he agreed to undergo psychoanalysis.

"Mind you, I didn't undergo analysis because I thought I needed it, but because it was required for my training," he says, reflecting an attitude characteristic of numerous Holocaust survivors. They kept silent about their experiences, hiding them deep inside, convinced they were not in need of help. Indeed, many survivors who didn't have anyone pressuring them to undergo therapy found themselves in later years, after they no longer worked and their children had moved out, with deeply suppressed traumas suddenly emerging.

In Durst's case, psychoanalysis helped him grapple with an intense dream that had troubled him, and to take leave finally from his parents and sisters, enabling him to accept and love the scared, lonely and abandoned child within himself. Thus freed from his own trauma, in 1970, he and his family immigrated to Israel; his sister and her family followed a couple of years later.

'Human approach'

Durst became involved here in developing trauma treatment for survivors, a field that only took shape professionally in the 1980s. He did not consciously pursue this area of psychology, he explains, rather it "fell into his lap" at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital in Petah Tikva, where he met Holocaust victims suffering from severe psychological distress.

"Apparently, I was the only one who was not afraid of them. Other therapists balked at the gruesomeness of their stories - the patients' traumas were too difficult and threatening."

Could you deal with it because you were a survivor yourself?

Durst: "This certainly was part of the reason, although I did not consider myself to be a war victim when I lived in the Netherlands, or during the first couple of years in Israel. 'He was just a child,' people said about me after the war. What I went through paled into insignificance when compared to what the survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen endured. It took quite some time for me to say that I was 'not just a child,' and to admit to being a survivor."

How do younger therapists manage?

"A considerable percentage of our therapists at Amcha are second-generation victims. Many survivors were unable to share their experiences with their children, and many of these children hope to be able to make up to others what they did wrong in the case of their parents."

Many therapists who work with such patients receive counseling themselves. Why?

"Therapists of traumatized people need supervision. They must be able to empathize, stand strong and laugh, as well as cry, with their patients. A distant type of attitude, like that which many therapists assume, will not achieve anything with these extremely traumatized patients. The therapists take their [patients'] stories home with them and dream about them. Supervision is required to keep them on their feet.

"A human approach is the only one to help these victims, but therapists also have to learn to keep their expectations limited. They cannot repair the suffering; at best, they can help to relieve it. Patients often have children and grandchildren, but still felt alone all their lives because they were the only ones who survived the war. A therapist can break through this feeling of loneliness. During therapy, even for a short while ... survivors feel they are not alone."

There are still "new" survivors, elderly people who have kept silent all of their lives, showing up at Amcha's 25 Amcha branches and clinics.

Durst: "One person kept the Amcha telephone number in his wallet for years, but did not call until just before he had to undergo life-threatening heart surgery. He could not bear the thought of dying without ever having told his story to a living soul."

Since its founding in 1987, the organization, with a staff of 380 professionals and more than 700 volunteers, provides services to some 12,000 clients, both survivors and their children. These include short- or long-term psychotherapy for individuals and families, social clubs that operate according to the principles of a therapeutic community, home visits by professionals, rehabilitation and recreational activities, and so on.

For his part, for 30 years following the war, Durst would not have any dealings with Germans, and it was only several years after that that he was able to set foot on German soil. His reconciliation with the people who killed his family eventually reached the point, however, where, for 10 years, he lived with a half-Jewish German woman who immigrated to Israel to be with him (and returned to Germany recently, when their relationship ended).

'Deeper pain'

Durst is 79 years old now, but he is full of vitality, and the years (and the misery he endured) do not show. Two years ago, he retired as Amcha's clinical director; today, he still teaches psychology at the University of Haifa and lectures internationally to both academic and lay audiences. In addition he has a private practice in Herzliya, and estimates that one-third of his clients are Holocaust victims. "A larger percentage is impossible to bear," he says.

How do you persevere?

"I think it is not very hard for me to talk or give lectures about the Shoah because the death of my children caused a much deeper pain than the loss of my parents and older sisters. The things I experienced as an adult outshine my war experiences as a child.

"But I also went through extensive development in the way in which I talk about my past. In 1946, a relative from South America sent me a picture of my family: my mother, the three girls, my father and me. I had no visual memory of my family, but this photograph reminded me of what they looked like. I talked about this photograph in my lectures, and slowly started mentioning the names. Last month, during a lecture in Frankfurt, I showed the picture for the first time. To the left is my mother Esther, next to my sisters Hanna, Fanny and Janny, followed by my father Moshe. The little boy at the right is me. I placed myself right next to the screen, next to the boy. I felt a tremor going through the audience. It is really much more impressive if listeners see the people and hear their names. And it is fulfilling to keep the memory of my father, mother and sisters alive. But it took me 70 years before I was able to do this."

Do you feel German, Dutch or Israeli?

'When I walk the streets of Kiel, I understand every word people speak. This is not the case in Israel, where I hear Russian and Arabic in the streets and Hebrew with any imaginable accent. Does this mean I feel at home in Germany? Not really; when I take the train through this country and see the magnificent countryside, I think: The Germans do not deserve this beauty. Do I hate them? No, but it does not feel like home either. And the Netherlands? A Dutch grocer took my sisters to the police, Dutch police officers took my sisters to Germany. Does this mean I hate the Netherlands? No, but it does not feel like home either."

For additional information about Amcha, visit www.amcha.org read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/breaking-through-the-loneliness-...

zwst.org/cms/documents/387/de_DE/child-suvivor-web.pdf (download) Dr. Nathan Durst – ein Sorger um die verletzten Seelen der Überlebenden der Shoah Dass Nathan Durst am 14. Dezember 1930 in Berlin geboren wurde und dort auch zunächst aufwuchs, hörte man ihm nicht an. Mit seinem weichen holländischen Akzent (zumindest wenn er Deutsch sprach) und seinem Charme war Nathan in der Lage, sehr schnell Beziehungen zu knüpfen, eine Fähigkeit, die ihm bei seiner professionellen Arbeit sicher sehr geholfen hat. Nathan Durst wuchs in einer orthodoxen Familie auf, die ursprünglich aus Galizien stammte. Nach der Pogromnacht schickten ihn seine Eltern gemeinsam mit seiner ältesten Schwester Hanna nach Holland, wo sie Verstecke fanden und überlebten. Seine Eltern und die beiden jüngeren Geschwister wurden nach Auschwitz deportiert und ermordet. Nach dem Ende der Naziherrschaft und des Krieges blieb Nathan zunächst in Holland. Auf einer Israelreise lernte er seine Frau kennen, mit der er zwei Söhne hatte. In Amsterdam und Groningen absolvierte er sein Studium der klinischen Psychologie und promovierte dort 1970. 1971 wanderte er mit seiner Familie nach Israel aus, wo er an verschiedenen Kliniken arbeitete, als Supervisor für Einzel- und Gruppensupervision tätig war und Lehrtätigkeiten an den Universitäten in Tel Aviv und Haifa aufnahm. Er organisierte auf Grund der Erkrankung seiner beiden Söhne eine Elternselbsthilfegruppe für an Mukoviszidose erkrankte Kinder. Er arbeitete als Berater und Supervisor bei ELAH, einem Zentrum für Shoah-Überlebende aus Holland und gehörte 1987 zu den Mitbegründern von AMCHA, einer Organisation, die seither tausende von Überlebenden und ihre Familien psychotherapeutisch betreut hat und zahlreiche Zentren für Überlebende in Israel betreibt. Von 1994-1996 war Nathan Durst Chefpsychologe und bis 2007 klinischer Direktor dieser Organisation, in der er seitdem in Vorstand saß. 1986 gehörte er zu den Mitbegründern des Study Center of Psychological Effects of the Holocaust an der Bar Ilan University, von 19881991 war er Präsident der Israel Association of Psychotherapy. Seit 1990 hat er zahlreiche Vorträge, Seminare und Gruppentrainings zu den Themen Trauma, Altern und Folgen der Shoah in Europa und den USA gehalten und durchgeführt sowie zahlreiche Artikel veröffentlicht. Außerdem betrieb er in Herzliya eine psychotherapeutische Praxis. Seit 1999 nahm Nathan Durst als Referent an Seminaren und Konferenzen der ZWST zum Thema „Arbeit mit Überlebenden der Shoah“ teil. Viele Sozialarbeiter/innen und Pflegekräfte von jüdischen Gemeinden, Altenzentren oder ambulanten Pflegediensten hatten das Glück, von Nathan Durst zu lernen. Einfühlsam und mit scharfem analytischen Verstand unterstützte er die Seminarteilnehmer darin, Reaktionen und Verhaltensweisen von Überlebenden besser zu verstehen und ihre eigene Rolle in der psychosozialen Betreuung zu reflektieren. Selbst Überlebender der Shoah, konnte er manchmal scheinbar verärgert und aggressiv, manchmal auch zynisch Fragen stellen und so mit seinem ‚na ja’ oder ‚du meinst so?’ zur Klärung heikler Situationen und zur Aufklärung von Missverständnissen beitragen. Als sich 1999/2000 die Initiative „Treffpunkt“ zusammenfand, um über mögliche Betreuungs- und Beratungsangebote für Überlebende zu diskutieren, stand Nathan uns mit seinem Rat, seinen Fragen und Vorschlägen zur Seite. In den folgenden Jahren, nachdem der „Treffpunkt“ für Überlebende in Frankfurt gegründet und der Weg für weitere Projekte in Deutschland geebnet war, beobachtete Nathan wohlwollend, aufmerksam und hinterfragend unsere Entwicklungen. Immer hatte er ein offenes Ohr für unsere Probleme, teilte mit uns seine Erfahrungen und diskutierte seine eigenen Überlegungen und Projekte. Selbst in seinem letzten Lebensjahr, als ihn seine Krankheit schon sehr schwächte, wollte er immer noch wissen‚ was sich bei euch tut’ und machte Pläne für weitere Fortbildungsschwerpunkte. Am 2. Februar 2012 ist Nathan Durst nach schwerer Krankheit in Herzliya gestorben. Wir werden ihn immer als warmherzigen und zugewandten Menschen in Erinnerung behalten. Er wird uns fehlen. Baruch Dajan Emet. Möge seine Seele in Frieden ruhen. Noemi Staszewski Leiterin des ZWST-Treffpunktes für Überlebende des Holocaust in Frankfur

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Jul 11 2019, 7:40:21 UTC