BAR-ON, DAN





Bio-note:

DAN BAR-ON was born in 1938 in Haifa to parents of German descent. He was a member of Kibbutz Revivim for 25 years where he served as a farmer, educator and Secretary of the Kibbutz. After completing his M.A. in psychology in 1975, he worked in the Kibbutz Clinic, specializing in therapy and research with families of Holocaust survivors. In 1981 he received his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1985 he launched a pioneering field research in Germany, studying the psychological and moral after-effects of the Holocaust on the children of the perpetrators. His book Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich was published in 1989 by Harvard University Press and has since been translated and published in French, German, Japanese and Hebrew. Since then, Bar-On has brought together descendants of survivors and perpetrators for five intensive encounters (the TRT group, shown by the BBC on TimeWatch, October, 1993), as well as students from the third generation of both sides. His book Fear and Hope: Three Generations of Holocaust Survivors' Families was published in Hebrew, English, German and Chinese .His last book The Indescribable and the Undiscussable was published in 1999 by Central European University Press. In 1998 and in 2002-3, Bar-On was the Ida E. King Chair for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton College of New Jersey. He is currently a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben-Gurion University, where he served as Chair of the Department in 1993-1995 and again in 2003-5. He is the co-director of PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) near Beit Jala, PNA, together with Professor Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University. He is married, has four children and four grandchildren.


Awards:

1996 - David Lopatie Chair for Post-Holocaust Psychological Studies

1998 – Honorary Doctorate, Stockton College of New Jersey, NJ, USA

2001 - The Alexander Langer Prize (Italy) together with Prof. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University, for their joint work, co-directing PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East).

2001 - Cross of Merit of The German Government (BundesverdeinstKreuz, 1st Klasse) for his pioneering study, interviewing the German descendants of Nazi perpetrators and bringing them together with descendants of Holocaust survivors (the TRT group).

2003 – Eric Maria Remarque Peace Prize, Osnabruck, Germany.

Research Interests:(CV)

The after effects of the Holocaust among three generations of families of Jewish victims and among families of Nazi perpetrators: What has been transmitted and what has been worked though? The "Others" within us: The reconstruction of the Israeli collective identity within three generations: From the Monolithic through the disintegration to dialogical collective identity. Israelis and Palestinians reconstruct their historical narratives during the transition from violent conflict to peace building. Qualitative (biographical and narrative) research methods, including issues of re-scaling in quantitative research. Reconstructing social "facts:" the indescribable and the undiscussable. Storytelling and dialogue between parties in conflict situations: Learning from the Jewish-German context and the Israeli-Palestinian context. Studying the triangle Germans- Jews- Palestinians, with emphasis on displacement of aggression. Studying issues of reconciliation and peace building (bottom-up), versus peace making (top-down). Developing a center and an MA program for Conflict Studies and Negotiations. Co-Directing PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) at Talitha Kumi (near Beit Jala), together with Professor Sami Adwan, Bethlehem University.

Recent Publications:

Recent Books:

Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (Eds.). (2001). Victimhood and Beyond. Jerusalem: PRIME.

Bar-On,D. (2000). Bridging the Gap. Hamburg: Koerber. (In English & German)

Bar-On,D. & Chaitin, J. (2001). Parenthood and the Holocaust. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

Bar-On,D. (1999). The "Others" Within Us: Changes in the Israeli Identity from a Psychosocial Perspective. Jerusalem: Ben Gurion Publication with Mosad Bialik. (in Hebrew). Koerber Foundation, Hamburg. (in German).

Bar-On,D. (1999). The Indescribable and the Undiscussible: Reconstructing Human Discourse After Trauma. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press.

Bar-On,D. (1995). Fear and Hope: Life-Stories of Five Israeli Families of Holocaust Survivors, Three Generations in a Family. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.(In English, German, Hebrew and Chinese)

Bar-On, D. (1989). Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.m [In English, German (In 2003 a new edition by Koerber Foundation), Hebrew, French and Japanese].

Recent articles in referred Journals:

Bar-On, D.,Yitzhaki-Verner, T. & Amir, S. (1996). "The recruited identity": The influence of the Intifada on the perception of the Peace Process from the standpoint of the individual. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 6, 3, pp. 193-223.

Bar-On, D. (1998). The Israeli society between the culture of death and the culture of life. Israel Studies, 2, 2, pp. 88-112.

Lazar, A., Amir, M. & Bar-On, D. (2000). Quantitative assessment of response shift in QOL research. Social Indicators Research, 49, 37-49.

Maoz, I., Bar-On, D., Steinberg, S. & Farkhadeen, M. (in press). The Dialogue between the “Self” and the “Other”: A Process Analysis of Palestinian-Jewish Encounters in Israel. Human Relations.

Bar-On, D. (2001). The Silence of Psychologists. Journal of Political Psychology, 22, 2, 331-345.

Bar-On, D. (2001).Who counts as a Holocaust survivor? Who suffered more? Why did the Jews not take revenge on the Germans after the war. Freie Assoziazionen, 4, 2, 155-187. (In German). Also in Socio-Analysis, 3, 1, 1-21.

Bar-On, D. (2002). The Bystander, in relation to the victim and the perpetrator: Today and during the Holocaust.The Journal of Social Justice, 14, 2, 125-148.

Albeck, J.H., Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2002). Dialogue groups: TRT's guidelines for working through intractable conflicts by personal storytelling in encounter groups. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 8, 4, 301-322.

Chaitin, J., Obeidi, F., Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2002). Environmental work and peace work: The Palestinian – Israeli case.Peace and Conflict Studies, 9, 2, 64-94.

Litvak-Hirsch, T.,Bar-On, D. & Chaitin, J. (2003). Whose House is This? Dilemmas of Identity Construction in the Israeli-Palestinian Context. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 9,(2), 127-148.

Bar-On, D. (2003). Genocidal mentalities have to be developed. The Aegis Review on Genocide, 1, 1, 15-19.

Bar-On, D. & Kassem, F. (in press). Storytelling as a way to work-through intractable conflicts The TRT German-Jewish experience and its relevance to the Palestinian – Israeli context. Journal of Social Issues

Sawada, A., Chaitin, J. & Bar-On, D. (in press). Surviving Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Experiences and Psycho-social Meanings. Psychiatry.

Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (in press). PRIME’s Sharing the history project: Palestinian and Israeli teachers and pupils learning each other’s narrative. In S. Mcoy-Levy (Ed.). Youth In Post-Conflict. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Uni Press.

Glasner, G. & Bar-On, D. (in press). Eliezer Greenbaum: The construction of a story of a Kappo in the frame of memorizing the Holocaust in Israel. Alpayim (In Hebrew).

 

Key Words : Intergenerational processes; trauma; working through; Holocaust; The others within; collective identity; quality of life; qualitative methods; response shift. dialogue between populations in conflict. 

 

 

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