
Holocaust Paradox: Long Lives for Those Who Survived - onetimemanytime
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-28/holocaust-health-paradox-survivors-lived-longer
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cm2187
Kind of obvious but can it be simply a selection bias? The weakest died in the
camps, the survivors would be the healthier, stronger, and therefore have a
longer life expectancy than average.

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dogma1138
The question is if it’s just a simple selection bias or did the stress of
living under those conditions have had biological effects that are
advantageous to longer life span.

We know that cellular stress response and stress proteins have a positive
effect on some functions that could induce longer life span, these tend to be
most often related to heat and cold shock which is likely one of the key
reasons behind why many cultures developed customs that induce heat or cold
shock such as sauna and ice dipping.

So my personal bet is that this goes way beyond simple selection bias that
pre-selected the fittest and has likely involved biological changes that were
favorable for longevity.

The question now is how to identify these changes and mechanisms and replicate
them without having to force someone to live through literal hell.

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hopler
Caloric restriction (extreme dieting) is well known to increase lifespan.
Intermittent fasting shows tentative promise.

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onetimemanytime
Would a too extreme diet do permanent harm, or is our body used to bouts of
near starvation?

The survivor bias makes sense, those that would have died at 65-75 years maybe
died _then_ when tested by the hardships.

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DanBC
>Would a too extreme diet do permanent harm

Yes, which is why anorexia is so harmful, and why early intervention for
anorexia is so important.

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fsloth
Anyone interested in the psychology of survivors will likely find "Man's
search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl - a psychiatrist and survivor himself an
enlihgtening read. What makes man go on, and when will he/she just give up?

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yesenadam
Naturally I also thought of this powerful book, that I read almost 30 years
ago.

He found that the people that survived the camps were those that had something
to live for, whose lives retained some meaning, some value, and that that was
more significant than any other factor.

...And I just read his (pretty disturbing) wikipedia page. I hadn't heard any
of the 'Controversy' stuff before, of which there is a _lot_ , too much to
summarize here. No wonder he's not better-known these days.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl)

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fsloth
Thanks. It seems part of that critique rose out of infighting in the jewish
community - Frankl did not want to seek persecution and hence was labeled a
traitor to the cause? It sounds like he was treated like a willfull
collaborator.

Without more information I can actually relate to both sides of the argument.
A person has a only one life. I can totally understand if one wants to just
forget and move on.

Regarding logotherapy - lots of people have survived great loss by chasing a
higher goal. For example Enrico Fermi dove into physics at a young age after
he had lost his beloved brother.

Logotherapy is not philosophy, it's a treatment. It's intellectually dishonest
to compare it to a political ideology.

As diagnozed with severe depression recently I can't really fault the idea of
trying to find meaning in those pieces of your life that you have left.

The medical experimentation part sound nasty, though. I have no idea what to
make of that.

I suppose none of the above changes my view on the subject. The book is a self
help book and like all in it's genre should be read with a pinch of salt and
not like some deep philosophical guide to life. It's one medicine to deal with
personal loss and tragedy. People are really different in terms of what works
for them.

The story in the book is still moving one. The fact that Mr. Frankl uses it to
also advertize his professional services is fairly obvious, though.

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maxxxxx
Seems pretty obvious to me. People who survive such conditions are probably
stronger and more resistant on average.

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pizza
It's possible, but it also seems likely to me that such an event would totally
devastate a person, and that we don't hear much from devastated people.

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Pharmakon
Because they already died? So add survivorship bias into the mix along with
the role of the holocaust as a kind of hellish crucible for fitness?

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austincheney
The most observed behavior among the longest lived is radical independence. It
isn't wild to suggest surviving a holocaust death camp would make a person
more independently minded. Conversely, most people take this for granted while
craving conveniences at every turn.

I learned to program JavaScript more confidently on my first Afghanistan
deployment. Being able to work offline without references or tools was
important when I was constantly on the move. Even to this day portability and
performance are the things I value most in an application. Most other
JavaScript developers I have encountered in the real world need a mountain of
third party libraries and frameworks with a fixed internet connection for the
simplest of things.

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dejv
My grandmother was survivor and died few months ago as 95 years old. To be
honest I havent seen any radical independence traits or much impact caused by
that period, she was around 20 when in camp which might help as body and mind
might heal better while young. She had nice and quiet life as farmer, retired
as 75 years old doing hard work in freezing cold or under hot sun every single
day. She used bicycle each day till 88 or something.

Somebody mentioned gulag, my grandfather was send there as political prisoner,
working in uran mines. His health was impacted and he died relatively early.

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DevX101
In addition to the other cm2187's accurate observation that this may be
literal survivor bias, the other potential explanation is whether the control
group was well designed.

Israel is currently ~50% Sephardic Jews, descendants from Middle Eastern/North
African peoples. Holocaust survivors are almost all Ashkenazi Jews (European
ancestors). If the study was comparing Ashkenazi Jews in the test group vs a
control group that was majority Sephardic, it's possible the differences in
lifetime was due to some cultural or genetic differences between the two
groups.

The study doesn't seem to account for this confounding variable.

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curtis
The control group was drawn from Jews who were born in Palestine between 1911
and 1945. I think it's likely that this group would likely have been almost
entirely Ashkenazi Jews, because there was substantial emigration of European
Jews into Palestine prior to World War II.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah).

(It's not relevant to your point, but although Sephardic Jews are not
Ashkenazi Jews, not all non-Ashkenazi Jews are Sephardic. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews.))

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EGreg
Actually many Sephardi Jews already lived in Israel at that time, having come
during the Ottoman period.

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intopieces
Some of those who are still alive were like 2 when they left. I doubt it had
as much impact on them as, say, the 20-somethings who both starved and were
forced into labor.

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myth_drannon
Too many unknowns. For example holocaust survivals received yearly reparations
from Germany (not only death camps survivals but even displaced ones). Did it
help them somehow, less financial stress? It sure helped my grandmother I
believe. What about Gulag system survivals, do we see the same effect?

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aaron695
Consistent with the meme that the reason people lived longer after the Great
Depression was because they had caloric restricted for years.

[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/06/eat-
fas...](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/06/eat-fast-and-
live-longer)

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helaoban
This seems like a misuse of the word paradox.

