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"Study Of Holocaust Survivors Finds Trauma Passed On To Children's Genes"

  • The Guardian
  • (August 21, 2015)

Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations. The findings from a research team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai led by Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and Director of Traumatic Stress Studies Division at Mount Sinai, stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda. Learn more.