Henry Krystal papers

Henry Krystal, M.D. (1925-2015) was a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, best known for his pioneering research in the area of post-traumatic stress among Holocaust survivors. He was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, the son of Herman and Devorah (nee Grossman) Krystal. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, his father, an accountant, and his older brother, a physician, fled eastward, and were never heard from again. His mother was deported to Treblinka in 1942, where she was murdered, and Krystal was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a forced laborer, and was subsequently interned in camps at Starachowice, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen, prior to his liberation by the Allies during a death march from the latter camp in 1945. After living as a displaced person in the British and American occupation zones in Germany, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Detroit, since he had relatives living there. He studied at Wayne State University, obtaining a bachelor's degree, and then a medical degree in 1953, following which he obtained further training as a psychiatrist and established a private practice in Southfield, Michigan, while also serving as a professor of psychiatry at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. In 1965, he published, with William Niederland, a pioneering study of 150 Holocaust survivors, in which he first identified the concept of "survivor's guilt," and this work paved the way for the study of what eventually became identified as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Krystal published numerous works about such trauma, and he continued research in this field, as well as the development of therapeutic techniques for use with survivors of such trauma. In addition, he interviewed and treated hundreds of Holocaust survivors living in the Detroit area, and for many of them, documented their conditions for their applications for restitution or pensions from the German government. Dr. Krystal died at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on 8 October 2015.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Esther Rose Krystal

Gift of Esther R. Krystal, 2016.