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Jul. 31, 2007 21:04 | Updated Jul. 31, 2007 22:29
Help where it is most needed

The statistics vary. According to some, there are 120,000 needy Holocaust survivors in this country – all, naturally, elderly. Other data puts the number of Holocaust survivors who depend exclusively on National Insurance Institute old-age allowances at no more than 60,000.

Either way, the inadequacy of the payments is intolerable and the imperative to help is urgent.

In that light, after much publicity and hype, it was recently decided to increase the NII payments, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announcing a few days ago that his government had now “repaired a thus-far ignored 60-year-old injustice.”

“Holocaust survivors who live in Israel,” said the PM, “deserve a life of dignity, without reaching a situation in which they cannot enjoy a hot meal.” He vowed that the neglect displayed by previous administrations “will be no more” and stressed that “it is imperative to make sure that survivors get additional allowances, enabling them to exist with self-respect.”

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Holocaust survivors insulted by offer
Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent | August 01, 2007

ISRAELI Holocaust survivors are up in arms about a new government pension that will add a mere 83 shekels ($22) to the monthly incomes of veterans aged above 70.

The pension scheme, announced this week, supplements an existing aged pension and national insurance program, but survivors’ advocacy groups say the new stipend disgraces the legacy of the 120,000 survivors who could receive it.
“It is saddening and insulting to discover that Israel prefers a biological solution for the plight of the Holocaust survivors,” Noah Flug, who heads an umbrella organisation of survivors’ advocacy groups, told Haaretz newspaper.

However Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who announced the scheme this week, said it would go part of the way towards redressing ambivalence in Israeli society towards the survivors of the Nazi death camps and eastern European ghettos.

“We are correcting a 60-year-old blight,” Mr Olmert said of the decision.

“Holocaust survivors living in Israel are entitled to live respectably, without reaching a situation in which it is beyond their means to enjoy a hot meal.

“The neglect of successive governments will not continue.

“It is important to see to it that Holocaust survivors receive these supplements and are able to live honourably.”

Since the state of Israel was formed, the Holocaust survivors have often experienced hardship, and in some cases prejudice. Advocacy groups have repeatedly claimed that many live well below the poverty line and have received substandard health and mental health treatment from Israeli governments.

The monthly payment will be 83 Israeli shekels, increasing to 100 shekels a month within three years.

Aid groups estimate that close to one third of the 260,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel live in poverty. Most of those who immigrated after 1953 receive nothing more than the pension, although many may be entitled to the new stipend. A small number also receive a pension from the German Government.

Nearly 20 per cent of the survivors in Israel are older than 86 and 70 per cent are older than 76, according to government statistics.

The Israeli Finance Ministry says it pays $US326 million ($380 million) to Holocaust survivors each year.

Published: 07/31/2007

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pledged to recognize the activities of the Bergson Group in its permanent exhibition.

The Bergson Group, also known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, used newspaper ads and public rallies to draw attention to the plight of European Jewry during the Holocaust. Their activities were considered too radical at the time by the Jewish establishment, which preferred to exert influence more quietly.

Steven Luckert, the museum’s chief curator, said in a letter Monday that an overhaul of the exhibition segment dealing with the War Refugee Board would be completed by the spring of 2008. As part of that revision, the museum would “provide some visual materials and artifacts relating to the Bergson Group to better highlight its activities.”

The change comes after a public campaign by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies to pressure the museum that included two petitions, statements from members of Congress and a public by appeal by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. The institute had privately raised the issue years ago with the museum staff, and the institute’s director, Rafael Medoff, said the museum had promised as early as 2002 to make the adjustments.

Holocaust survivors may refuse to accept government payments
By Amiram Barkat , Haaretz Correspondent

Holocaust survivor organizations warned Tuesday that they might instruct survivors to refuse government stipends, following Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s decision to reduce survivor allowances.

The survivors’ representatives announced that they would consider taking other “dramatic steps” against the government, including requesting international Jewish organizations to pressure the cabinet into dropping the slashes. The survivors’ leaders are scheduled to meet Wednesday in Tel Aviv to discuss their future actions.

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Holocaust Survivors Blast $20 Stipend

By LAURIE COPANS
Associated Press Writer

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JERUSALEM – An Israeli government offer of a new $20 monthly stipend for Holocaust survivors provoked outrage Tuesday, with survivors charging the meager allowance will do nothing to make up for years of neglect of the 240,000 Israelis who lived through Nazi horrors.

Survivors have long claimed that European countries treat them far better than Israel, where many elderly survivors live in poverty. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s announcement of the new allowance did nothing to change that impression. One survivor called the offer “absurd and insulting.”

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Hundreds of thousands who survived concentration camps came to Israel after the war. Many suffered physical or psychological damage from the torture and deprivation they suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Six decades after the war ended, the remaining survivors are elderly, and many have been unable to provide for themselves in their final years, suffering chronic shortages of money for medical and psychological treatment and in some cases even food.

Israel TV showed video of an 85-year-old survivor who said the only meat he could afford was chicken necks.

Olmert presented his program as a solution.

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