This Week on Wellbeing, we begin a two-part series about the mental health impacts of the Holocaust. The Holocaust occurred from 1941 to 1945 and its mental health impacts are rarely talked about. In this episode, we talk with Holocaust survivor, Peter Gasper. Peter was born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia. Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and life changed for Peter and his family. Eventually, Peter was separated from his parents and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Peter gives a unique historical and generational perspective on mental health and how the Holocaust impacted it. 

In this episode Peter talks about the impact the Holocaust had on him as a young child and even on his life today, the experiences that he had during the Holocaust, how it had affected him over time, the lack of mental health support available directly following the Holocaust, his own thoughts on mental health, and how it would have been helpful for people like him to have had mental health support following the tragedy that was the Holocaust.   

"I think (mental health support following the Holocaust) would have been very helpful for children particularly, I don’t know how much adults would have taken advantage of it because that generation, of my parents, going to a psychologist or a physicist meant that you were sick.” - Peter Gasper on this episode of Wellbeing 

Tune in next week when we present the second part in this mini-series on the mental health impacts of the Holocaust.

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