WAINTRATER R. : To grow up during the Shoah. A hindered adolescence 

Adolescence characterizes itself as taking place through a need of analisis onto exterior reality. In such a situation of social and psychological catastrophe as the Shoah was, the destruction of any exterior reality prevents the subjcet from any anaclisis, thus leaving him at grips with an exterior reality experienced as being destructive. In the abscence of mediating structures, such as the group of peers or school, the adolescent will use mechanisms as the suppression of affects or denial whose prolonged use will forever stamp his psycholigical future.