A couple of nights ago I had another Nazi dream.
I’m in the Warsaw ghetto with my family, and need money to buy food. I try to get to the ATM machine (??) but it’s barricaded by guards. I manage to get my card in, but as soon as the $60 comes out, they grab it and run away.
But the scary part of the dream is part 2. I’m in the barracks with my children, and I know that They are coming to get me for defying them at the ATM. I wonder if I will die by bullet, or if there will be pain first. I pray for a quick death. I wonder if my children will persevere without me. And then I wake up.
I’ve been having Nazi dreams in various forms since fourth grade, but they intensified after watching “The Wave.”
Do all Jews have Nazi dreams? Do you?
yes,I do..
the first time was as a kid..
I had one last week and I'm a teen.
no,your not the only one.
I don't usually have them.
I used to have them when in sleepaway camp I read Holocaust books which is all the camp let us read on Tisha B'av. I cannot bring myself to ever read another book of the kind even though its important. But maybe you should check into these dreams and there's also the tefilla to say for bad dreams.
Never had a Nazi dream that I am aware of, but I do limit my exposure to the images and stuff of the Holocaust because it can become so overwhelming. It took me a long time before I was willing to watch Shindler's List, but I'm glad I did. Most of the time I just can't watch.
Have them regularly, particularly in heightened times of stress and anxiety…chased by large German Shepards and Nazis as I am running through a forest, hiding in a large abandoned building, hiding in a hotel-like building with lots of people and then we are evacuated and ushered onto a train, trying to escape by crossing wide river in the dark, hiding with many families in an apt (Anne Frank feeling)…oy!
I went through a period where I had them regularly–I was reading a lot of Holocaust history at the time. Now, as a previous poster said, I have them at times when there is a lot of stress in my life.
How did I miss this post??
Lots of Nazi nightmares, esp. as a kid. My parents exposed me to too much graphic info, too soon, too disembedded from hope and contemporary reality. Jewish identity was for them, unfortunately, deeply tied up with victimhood. Thank goodness for Camp Wise for giving me some positive Jewish identity!
We spent some time in Germany recently. I introduced the topic to my children carefully and selectively. We talked a lot about it the whole time. They came away, I believe, with a strong historical understanding, a proper measure of horror, but hopefully not an existential fear.
Wow. I had no idea this was so widespread. I've never discussed this with anyone. Thanks for validating my experience …
My sister wrote about this for her senior poetry thesis in college. It was called "What Jewish Children Dream About At Night" and mentions the seminal moments in our history. How we dream of a knife raised above us while we are bound to an altar… and about the Shoah.
I have been having Holocaust dreams since I was a young girl. And so has my sister. Thought we were the only ones…
Frume Sarah, that would be fascinating (and terrible) to read. Any way I could see that?
I'm not a Jew but I've been having lots of scary dreams about nazis and shoah since about age of 14. The most terrible dream was this:
I'm lying on a bed in an empty house which is very damaged. I'm watching myself. There is a hole in my hrad and the matress is brown coloured with old blood. I was killed a week ago. A doctor comes to see me. There is nothing to say about my state. Just dead. Then a terrible darkness falls and all there is a voice, loud and terrifying, shouting in a non existing language words that are cruel snd cannot be translated.
I will remember that one forever. It may not sound like a nazi dream – but the speaker is the Führer. In other dreams I usually am a Jew trying to escape or to save my family. Usually I wake up before we all die. I also saw nazis killing children by holding their feet and smashing their heads before learning they really did it…