Holocaust Survivors and Immigrants - Late Life Adaptations

Based on a unique research study, this volume examines the later life development of Holocaust survivors from Israel and the US. Through systematic interviews, the authors - noted researchers and clinicians - collected data about the lives of these survivors and how they compared to peers who did not share this experience. The orientation of the book synthesizes several conceptual approaches - gerontological and life span development, stress research, and traumatology, and also reflects the varied disciplines of the authors, spanning psychology, social work, and sociology. The result is a multi-faceted view of their subject with an understanding of the individual, society, and the interaction of the two, tempered by the authors' own Holocaust experiences. Chapters cover a range of areas including stress and coping of these survivors, reviews of their heath and mental health, an examination of their social integration, as well as a review of the multiple predictors of psychological well-being and adaptation to aging. This book will be of interest to psychologists, social workers, sociologists, psychiatrists, and all those who study both trauma and aging.


Boaz Kahana, Ph.D., is professor of Psychology at Cleveland State University.  Dr. Kahana is a fellow of the American Psychological Society and the Gerontological Society of America.  He has served as peer reviewer for the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Institute of Aging (NIA), and other government peer review groups.  He served as department chair of psychology and as director of the Center for Applied Gerontological Research at Cleveland State University.  He is on the editorial board of Aging and Mental Health. Boaz Kahana's publications cover the fields of psychology, stress and coping, traumatic stress among Holocaust survivors and Pearl Harbor survivors, and health of the aged.  His clinical work included diagnostic assessment and therapeutic intervention with a wide variety of patients.  He was born in New York City and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Eva Kahana, Ph.D., is the Robson Professor of Humanities and Sociology, and Director of the Elderly Care Research Center at Case Western Reserve University.  She is past chair of the American Sociological Association's section on Aging and the Life Course, and recipient of the section's distinguished scholar award.  She is principal investigator of two long term longitudinal studies, funded by the National Institute of Aging, which focus on the adaptation to frailty in later life and on successful aging in health and illness.  Her Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago, and she is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.  She has also served on a variety of government research review committees.  Eva Kahana is a child survivor of the Holocaust.  She immigrated in 1956, with her family, from Hungary to the United States.