TITLE:
The Costs of Silence: Failed Postwar Trauma Resolution in Poland and Survivor-Led Repair in South Korea
AUTHORS:
Wioletta Rebecka
KEYWORDS:
Embodied Memory, Intergenerational Trauma, Institutional Silence Psychoanalytic Trauma Theory, Sexual Violence in War, Transgenerational Trauma Prevention, War Rape Survivors Syndrome (WRSS)
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.2,
February
26,
2026
ABSTRACT: This comparative qualitative case study examines how postwar responses to conflict-related sexual violence shape the psychological transmission—or interruption—of trauma across generations. Focusing on two historically distinct yet structurally comparable contexts—post-Second World War Poland and post-colonial South Korea—the article investigates how enforced silence versus survivor-led testimony affects the embodiment, symbolization, and intergenerational inheritance of trauma. Drawing on psychoanalytic trauma theory, clinical observations, narrative analysis, and interdisciplinary research on embodied and epigenetic transmission, the study situates sexual violence in war not only as an acute traumatic event but as a long-term psychological condition mediated by political and social environments. In the Polish case, sexual violence perpetrated by Soviet “liberators” was rendered politically unspeakable under postwar communist rule, resulting in prolonged silence, blocked mourning, and the absence of social witnessing. Psychologically, this enforced silence prevented narrative integration, forcing trauma into somatic and relational channels and facilitating its transmission across generations through affect regulation, attachment patterns, and family systems (Danieli, 1998; van der Kolk, 2014). In contrast, the South Korean case illustrates how decades of denial surrounding Japanese military sexual slavery were partially transformed through public survivor testimony beginning in the early 1990s. The halmoni movement and the ongoing Wednesday Demonstrations created collective spaces of witnessing and ritualized remembrance, enabling trauma to shift from embodied secrecy toward symbolic articulation and shared meaning (Caruth, 1995; Assmann, 2011). Building on these contrasting trajectories, the article employs the framework of War Rape Survivors Syndrome (WRSS) (Rebecka, 2021) developed by the author of the article to conceptualize trauma as transgenerational, embodied, and politically mediated. Rather than introducing WRSS as a diagnostic category, the study applies it comparatively to demonstrate how psychological trauma transmission is sustained or interrupted depending on the availability of social recognition and symbolic containment. The findings suggest that the prevention of transgenerational trauma does not depend solely on individual treatment but on postwar environments that allow traumatic memory to move from the body into language, relationships, and collective acknowledgment. In this sense, WRSS reframes trauma not as a static aftermath of war but as a dynamic psychological process whose transmission—and prevention—is shaped by historical and social conditions.