Yom HaShoah: A large portion of Israel’s nearly 200,000 survivors live in poverty.
A 2015 survey by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel found that one quarter of Israeli survivors can’t afford medicine, while 30 percent sometimes go without food. Two-thirds say they are “distressed” by their financial situation.
“There are still gaps between the response and what’s needed,” Roni Klinsky, the foundation’s CEO, told JTA in 2014. In the past, “people got less help and weren’t organized enough to get assistance. The survivor issue wasn’t a high priority.” Dry Bones
Remembrance?
“The state’s attitude toward survivors may affect the memory of the Holocaust for future generations.”
As The Jerusalem Post’s legal affairs reporter Yonah Jeremy Bob wrote, Shapira warned that time is running out and the government must improvement things for survivors, whose average age is 85. According to the report, 16,000 survivors are waiting, some for years, to receive subsidized housing for which their eligibility has already been approved. In addition, in 2014 and 2015, NIS 60 million earmarked as aid to elderly survivors was never used for that purpose due to lack of oversight and of plans by the Social Equality Ministry to use the funds.
Likewise in 2016, the ministry used only NIS 4.3m. out of NIS 40m. sum budgeted for survivors. JPost
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