Miami Beach psychologist treats trauma victims in Israel

MIAMI BEACH — A Miami Beach psychologist who helped patients with trauma after the attacks by Hamas says there is trauma in Israel that has “not been seen in our generation.”

“Some people there are experiencing trauma that we have not seen in our generation,” Dr. Norman Goldwasser told CBS News Miami’s Peter D’Oench.

Goldwasser originally went to Israel to visit his daughter and seven grandchildren for the Jewish holiday of Succot and ended up spending a month in that country before returning to Miami on Wednesday.

Goldwasser was in a hotel 20 miles west of Jerusalem when Hamas launched its attacks on October 7. He said a hotel manager told people there to go to a bomb shelter.

“As soon as he said that,” said Goldwasser, “there was a huge explosion and the whole building shook and there was screaming and it was extremely frightening.”

Goldwasser treated 17 patients for trauma and he said he did not charge for his services. He said he has strong feelings. Both of his parents were Holocaust survivors. His father had been in Auschwitz and six other concentration camps. He said his mother survived after hiding in the Ukranian woods for two-and-a-half years.

Goldwasser said that in Israel, “There is a tremendous amount of suffering and a lot of trauma, anxiety and panic.”

“People whose children are on the border in Gaza waiting to go in,” he continued. “One woman who I am working with, her husband was killed years ago in Jenin, a hotbed of terrorism on the West Bank and her son is doing the same thing. Imagine her trauma that has paralyzed her and she can not function and can not sleep.”

He said another patient lives near a building that was hit by a rocket.

“She was experiencing involuntary movement of her hands,” he said. “Her eyes were twitching. Her chest was tight and she had not slept in several nights. This is what stress does to the central nervous system and to the body.”

He said he used a special technique to help patients.

“We do have some technology called EMDR, which stands for eye movement de-sensitivity reprocessing, which uses a bilateral de-sensitization of the brain and enables people to move on,” he said.

He said patients may need help for a long time.

“That depends on the extent of the trauma and how long the war is going on and if people are still going through sirens and missed blasts and especially if the ground invasion in Gaza happens, there could be prolonged trauma,” Goldwasser said. “I think they will need a lot of support and there is a dirty of psychologists, especially Anglo.”

He also said, “One of the people I worked with was traumatized more about the news about Israel being blamed.”

Goldwasser treated trauma patients for a week and a half in Israel and continues to help them through phone calls and Zoom. He plans to return to Israel in January.