Van der Cork Immigrants in Basel

Translated by Basel van der Cork in Zhi Li.

The beginning of this book introduces how a group of veterans who participated in the Vietnam War got into trauma. These people witnessed the cruelty of the war and experienced life and death. They did many unforgivable bad things to the people of the other country during the war.

Although the war is over and they have a normal life, they cannot participate in real life at all. Fragments of war keep flashing in my mind, haunted by nightmares, reminding them not to forget the war.

And they don't want to be traitors themselves, because their comrades are dead and they are still alive. They can't accept this fact. Just like the Nazi concentration camp described in the book "Living the Meaning of Life", those who survived through hardships in the concentration camp, when they returned home, found that everything was gone, only he was still alive. At that moment, he seemed like a traitor. This feeling will keep flashing in their minds, making them unable to live a normal life.

Whether this group of people experienced it personally or witnessed it with their own eyes, it will affect their existing lives, because their connection is the past, not the present. These people suffer from PTSD-post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is defined as: an individual "experienced, witnessed or suffered one or more actual deaths involving himself or others, or was threatened with death, or was seriously injured, or his physical integrity was threatened", resulting in "strong fear, helplessness or panic".

Mainly have the following symptoms:

1. Repeatedly disturbed by the memory related to the event (flashbacks, nightmares, feeling that the event seems to be reappearing);

2. Continue and try to avoid (people, places, thoughts and feelings related to trauma, and sometimes even forget important parts of trauma);

3. Increased alertness (forgetfulness, excessive vigilance or irritability).

There is a saying: when you don't know a person's past, you can't evaluate a person's present.

When we know the past of this group of people and their trauma, we can interpret their behavior.

They prefer to be trapped in the past. They don't want to betray the past, because their bodies remember everything.