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Being a Refugee – Reflections and Comments
Author(s) -
Parens Henri
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international journal of applied psychoanalytic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.314
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1556-9187
pISSN - 1742-3341
DOI - 10.1002/aps.1588
Subject(s) - refugee , narrative , german , action (physics) , gender studies , political science , sociology , criminology , psychology , history , law , art , literature , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
As I recount my own experience of having essentially been a refugee “twice” during World War II, the first time, when to escape what Jews experienced as a serious threat to life once the German army started its attack on its Western Europe neighbors we fled Brussels, Belgium to find safety in France. The second time occurred, when after a year in safety, by my mother's intentional action, I left France with 49 other, then for all intents and purposes family‐less refugees to come to America. As I narrate the ups and downs of my threat‐compelled meanderings I stop from time to time to reflect and comment on some of the experiences that confronted me and many other refugees – recognizing that side‐by‐side with some plausible generalizations one can make of such miserable experience, that there are as many individual narratives as there are refugees.