Eva Fogelman

Fogelman was born in a displaced persons camp in Kassel, Germany following World War II. She immigrated to the United States in 1959 after living in Israel. Fogelman received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, her master's degree in rehabilitation counseling from New York University, and her doctoral degree from CUNY Graduate Center.[5] She also has advanced training in family therapy from the Boston Family Institute and psychoanalytic psychotherapy training at Boston University Medical School.

In 1976, while working at Harvard Medical School, Fogelman and several other psychologists were interested in starting a Jewish mental health clinic at Boston University Hillel. The result of this project was the first short-term therapy group for children of Holocaust survivors, which Fogelman co-led with her colleague Bella Savran. The inspiration for the group came from reading a dialogue between several children of Holocaust survivors published in Response; a Contemporary Jewish Review in 1975. The groups attracted young adults from a broad spectrum of the Jewish community, from those who openly embraced their Jewish identity to those who did not know that they were Jews until well into their adulthood. The groups gave participants an opportunity to learn what they had in common and what was unique to their individual family histories; it also gave them support to be able to communicate with their parents about their horrific pasts, many for the first time. In 1978, Fogelman started the first short-term group for children of Holocaust survivors in Israel at Hebrew University, where she worked with Dr. Hillel Klein and Uri Last studying the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their families in Israel.

The groundbreaking therapeutic techniques established in these groups were written about in Helen Epstein's landmark article published in the June 19, 1977 New York Times Magazine entitled "Heirs of the Holocaust," and later in her book entitled Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors.[6] Epstein's article articulated what many children of survivors were feeling, but could not put into words: that they felt a sense of mourning that was unacknowledged by the greater Jewish community. This realization inspired the children of Holocaust survivors to want to connect with one another, sparking a movement of second generation Holocaust survivors, as they came to be known. These groups have taken different forms, in terms of time limited versus open-ended groups, with some incorporating multiple generations, child survivors, or the third generation, and others using different modalities, such as self-help and leader-led, psychoanalytic, psychodrama, and psychodynamic psychotherapy.

In 1978, Fogelman was leading a group for children of Holocaust survivors with Dr. Henry Grunebaum in Cambridge, MA, which became the subject of the award-winning documentary Breaking the Silence: the Generation After the Holocaust (PBS 1984), directed by Dr. Edward Mason and written and co-produced by Eva Fogelman. The film received international acclaim and was shown at the Berlin Film Festival (1985), the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinematheques, the American Psychiatric Association, the Jewish Museum, and the Joseph Papp Public Theater. It received a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival, a CINE Golden Eagle Award, and an award from the National Council on Family Relations.

While in Israel in 1981 for the First World Gathering, Fogelman started collecting data on non-Jews who rescued Jews during World War II. This project, known as the Rescuer Project, was sponsored by Dr. John Slawson of the American Jewish Committee and became her doctoral dissertation, The Rescuers: A Socio-psychological Study of Altruistic Behavior During the Nazi Era, presented in 1987 at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her dedication to these courageous people led her in 1986 to co-found with Rabbi Harold Schulweis the Foundation to Sustain Righteous Christians, which in 1987 would become the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, a project of the Anti-Defamation League. The Foundation, today known as the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, currently financially supports more than 450 non-Jewish rescuers worldwide.[7] Fogelman organized conferences at Princeton and across the United States and internationally on the subject. Her research culminated in the Pulitzer-prize nominated book, Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust,[8] published in 1994. The book also received an award from Amnesty International, a Christopher Award, and an award from the Unitarian Universalist Association. It was published in English, German (as Wir waren keine Helden: Lebensretter im Angesicht des Holocaust Motive, Geschichten, Hintergründ), and Czech (as Svĕdomí a odvaha: Zachránci Židů za holocaustu). It was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Elizabeth Swados, a Tony-nominated composer, playwright, and writer, composed and performed a cantata based on the book with the United Nations Association International Choir.

Fogelman has trained other mental health professionals extensively in the treatment of individuals who have suffered massive historical trauma, such as Armenians, Native Americans, African Americans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, El Salvadorans, and Cambodians. She co-founded and co-directed a training program with psychologist Al Brok at the Training Institute for Mental Health[16] in New York City called "Psychotherapy with Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas." From 1985 to 2010, this program trained mental health professionals to treat historically traumatized populations in individual, family and group modalities. This program also sponsored the Kestenberg Holocaust Memorial Lectures from 1991–2003 in memory of Judith and Milton Kestenberg.

Fogelman's theories on the mourning process of the second generation of Holocaust survivors were a model for Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, professor at University of New Mexico and founder of the Takini Network,[17] in her research and training of mental health professionals to work with Native Americans.

Fogelman has an active private practice in Midtown Manhattan, where she specializes in working with individuals, couples, families and groups in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Her main areas of focus are the Holocaust and related traumas, impossible relationships, multi-generational family businesses, infertility, identity, and creativity.[18] She also supervises mental health professionals and consults for organizations and businesses. She writes for popular as well as academic publications on a variety of topics, including sexual abuse as a weapon of war and genocide, philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism, and marital issues. Fogelman speaks frequently at academic conferences as well as to general audiences. Among other places, she has spoken at the Free University of Berlin, Hochschule für Polizei in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Oxford University, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Florida Atlantic University, University of Michigan, University of Oregon, and in Stockholm. She has appeared on numerous radio and television shows, such as Larry King Live, All Things Considered and CNN. She has written for Psychology Today, Jewcy.com, Lilith, The Jewish Daily Forward, Baltimore Jewish Times, The Boston Globe, the Congressional Record, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Moment magazine, American Jewish History, Tikkun, The Psychohistory Review, Psychoanalytic Review, Congress Monthly, Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, among others. She has been a member of the boards of iVolunteer, Child Development Research, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the American Friends of the Counseling Center for Women in Israel, the Training Institute of Mental Health,[16] the Remember the Women Institute, the Sacred Grounds Foundation, and Beit Rabban Day School. She is an adviser to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants. She is also on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Hidden Child Foundation Newsletter.[15] She is currently working on a book with Peace Sullivan entitled The Transference Trap about unconscious factors that affect intimate relationships and how to discover the distortions caused by these influences.