Psychology of Freedom

One of the striking things about Deutschkron's account is how Jews who had fled the Reich quickly abandoned their defensive mentality and lost their sense of urgency about those who remained. She writes that these individuals, most of whom had closely related family members awaiting their help in emigrating, lost their ability to decipher cryptic language and no longer seemed as worried about events back in Germany. One family wrote to their remaining family members that they would be sent for after the emigrants had finished opening their second store, causing their family in Germany to think they had been abandoned and were being left to fend for themselves.

The proximity, or lack thereof, of the dangers of the Reich is a part of this loss of urgency on the part of emigrants. Their cognitive dissonace is due to the immense gulf that always exists between people who are in mortal peril and those who are not. Being far away made everything happening under Hitler seem very small and less consequential. This is somewhat natural; people are inclined to spend their time dealing with getting by on a day-to-day basis. If something is not threatening on that level, the fear of it and its perceived dangerousness recedes further and further. Having evaded Nazi maltreatment, their pent up anxiety collapsed. They would have been in a state of shock such that even news of disastrous events in Germany did not register on a fundamental level as being reality. I think endorphins caused family members to lose their intimate connection with events back home--such immense relief at having personally escaped that nothing else could faze them, not even the dangers still facing their friends and family.

Also, those exposed to suffering and sustained danger often appear numbed to its effects. Combat veterans often have what appears to others to be an indifferent attitude toward suffering, what is just their psyche shielding them from further psychological damage that would reach levels impossible to manage. The same effects have been reported of many Holocaust survivors.