This spring’s commemoration of the Holocaust brought up not only memories of the horror in Europe but also concerns about institutional neglect and suffering among today’s survivors.
After spending the evening watching the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony held annually at the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Holocaust Museum, I opted to attend the first ever alternative event for those who suffered the Holocaust and survived.
The event, which was held in the rose garden opposite the Knesset on national Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 16, was organized by pensioner’s rights group, Ken Lazaken, in order to raise public awareness to the plight of more than 70,000 Holocaust survivors, almost all of whom are in their golden years, who live in poverty in the Land of Israel.
It was this event, which included speeches from social rights activists, survivors and politicians (including Israel’s new Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog) that put the plight of many survivors here in the spotlight. And it was very moving.
Under the banner “Every survivor has a name: We must all take responsibility,” Natan Lavon, director of Ken Lazaken, told me that the goal was “to find a suitable solution so that all Holocaust survivors can live out their final years in dignity.”
He estimated that more than 1,500 Holocaust survivors out of roughly 250,000 currently living in Israel had died in the past year and emphasized that, “We are not talking about that many people or that many more years to help them.”
Yehudit Mazor, a Holocaust survivor who was present at the event and the sister of former Hadassah-Israel president Miriam Griver, said that it was shameful to see other survivors still suffering in the State of Israel.
“When I hear how Germany and other countries in Europe treat their survivors compared to Israel, I am shocked,” she said.
“Both my sister and I were children in Hungary during the war, my father survived Auschwitz, but because my sister lived for a time in the U.S., she is not entitled to any survivor benefits here. So what if she lived in America? She is still a survivor.”
Around Yom HaShoah 2006, Ken Lazaken and others worked to raise the issue that we should be focusing on survivors of Nazi persecution. Their efforts hit home in the political establishment.
On May 20, Herzog published a 60-page document aimed at alleviating the economic hardships faced by more than a quarter of Israel’s survivors.
Compiled by an inter-ministerial government committee, which was set up immediately following Holocaust Remembrance Day, the main thrust of the aid program is to assist survivors who receive no benefits either from the Israeli government or in the form of reparations from Germany, Holland, Austria or Belgium.
According to the current Israeli law, survivor benefits are granted only to those who moved to Israel prior to 1953. But over the past 20 years, some 170,000 survivors have arrived here from the former Soviet bloc.
If he manages to receive full government approval, Herzog will hopefully increase the overall aid budget to NIS 1.5 billion and put forward permanent legislation ensuring that all Holocaust survivors, whether they were incarcerated in concentration camps or spent the war years in hiding, will not have to survive on a minimal pension and be forced to chose between food and medicine on a daily basis.
“The battle we have been fighting is finally drawing results,” said Maj. Gen. (Reserve) Uzi Dayan, chairman of social action party Tafnit and founding president of the Sderot Conference for Society, who also spoke at the alternative ceremony.
“We have forced the government to take a serious look at the problem and draft a comprehensive plan on how to help these people.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is not just for those who perished but it should also remember those who are still alive.”
Director General of the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services, Nachum Itzkovich, one of the civil servants responsible for drafting the new government aid package told me that he did not believe there was another population in Israel that had the same standing.
“These people do not have much longer left with us and there is no reason survivors should not get these benefits,” he said.
Ruth Eglash, a former assistant editor for The Chronicle, is the social welfare correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.
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