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As the population of Holocaust survivors continues to age and die, Cohen intends to continue
providing these survivors a platform to share. “Soon there will be no witnesses left to tell us
what happened.”
Cohen received this fellowship from the Texas Project for Human Rights Education. She grew up
in Mississippi in the 1950s and ’60s where she developed her commitment to social and economic
justice and worked as part of the civil rights movement.
She says, “I learned early about the negative effects of privilege and power on those who are
marginalized in our society. I chose social work as a career because of its mission to enhance the
well-being of all people, and to empower the oppressed and vulnerable.” First as a social worker and
now as a social work educator, Cohen is committed to educating students about global issues that
social work seeks to ameliorate, such as poverty, lack of health care and social injustice.
Cohen is researching memory in Holocaust survivors, which involves loss, violence and survival.
Cohen said, “Memory promotes resilience by enabling them to remember the past, share their
meaningful stories with others, remember why and how they survived, and find meaning in the
aftermath of adversity.”
She has discovered that even though survivors experienced early childhood traumatic events, which
predicted negative life adaptations, many of them created families, built successful careers, adapted
to older adulthood and made tremendous contributions to their communities.
“Holocaust survivors are not a homogenous group. They differ in pre-Holocaust, Holocaust and
post-Holocaust experiences, and they demonstrate a variety of adaptive coping behaviors,” she said.
Cohen’s study, “Narratives of Forgiveness Among Older Holocaust Survivors,” relates the importance
of forgiveness for this population, and how it supports their sense of well being as they near the end
of their lives. Cohen believes social workers must recognize their older clients’ need for forgiveness
to contribute to their overall mental health.
Cohen will continue documenting how the survivors rebuilt their lives after the Holocaust with
written materials and film. She would like to study these older adults to learn how they constructed
their life narratives reflecting trauma, loss, vulnerability, hope and resilience.
“How did the Holocaust survivors’ pre-Holocaust, Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences
inform their career decisions, their adaptation to aging and their decision to give back to their
communities?” she asks.
She is also interested in how the lessons learned from these Holocaust survivors can be translated
into best practices to assist contemporary survivors of torture, persecution and trauma. “How can
mental health practitioners help people rebuild their lives and adjust to a new country that has little
experience with torture or genocide?”
Inspired by the Embrey Human Rights Program at SMU, Cohen is in the early stages of pioneering
a human rights program at TCU in which students and faculty will have the opportunity to grow in
knowledge and experience.
“I’ve always, as long as I can remember, wanted to make the world a better place,” Cohen said. “This
may get us one step closer toward that.”
“...I chose social work as a career because of its
mission
to enhance the well-being of all people,
and
to empower the oppressed and vulnerable.”
- COHEN
research
The Harris College Magazine
- Summer 2012 ·
15