Chaya H. Roth

Chaya Roth is a child survivor of the Holocaust. After the war Roth lived in Antwerp, then moved to Chicago as a young adult. She earned her PhD in psychology from the University of Chicago in 1960. She served as Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Chicago and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois over the course of thirty years.

Chaya reflects: "As the youngest in my family, I was seen by the adults as too little to understand what was going on, too small to remember what had happened to us during the War, and too minuscule to have suffered at all. And because I was never to reveal my true name to anyone or to tell anyone from where I came, I felt like a stranger in any new environment except with my family.

"When our children were born, I was overjoyed because now I would no longer be a stranger. I felt that my children had to know me - the 'me' who was a stranger in this land, the United States of America. I was driven to tell them, as soon as they were able to understand, who I was and where I came from. I told them what happened in my family and to me during the War; what had been difficult and painful; and how lucky we had been that some Christian people came to our help.

"I soon realized that my children and I did not share a common past. Because of this, I shared with my children, almost daily from the time they were very young, some event that occurred during the War; and these reminiscences continued throughout their growing up years. As the years went on, I learned that memory of the Holocaust is not a static phenomenon. The stories that parents and grandparents tell their offspring are not necessarily accepted as givens. Rather, our children hear our stories through their respective and unique modes of perception. As they become youths, young adults, and parents themselves they bring their specific styles of thinking to their understanding of the past."

Among Roth's publications are contributions to Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust, ed. Elaine S. Fox, introd. Phyllis Lassner, Northwestern University Press, 2013; The Multiple Facets of Therapeutic Transactions, with co-author Steven Kulb, International Universities Press, 1997; Roth and Morrison, “Infant-Family Psychotherapy: One Approach to the Treatment of Infant and Family Disturbances,” in Development in Jeopardy, ed. Fenichel and Provence, International Universities Press, 1993 and Roth, et al. “Tellers and Listeners: The Impact of Holocaust Narratives,” in Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, ed. Peter Hayes, Northwestern University Press, 1992.