Our obligation to the survivors

The very least that a strong Israel can do now is to care adequately for those who suffered most from the absence of a Jewish state.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
It is time once again for the annual ritual of feeling collective anguish at the disgraceful plight of our Holocaust survivors. As Holocaust Remembrance Day rolls around, we are reminded that those who lived through the Nazi-instigated horrors that destroyed European Jewry continue to lack basic necessities.
Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog announced this week that about 80,000 Holocaust survivors would receive subsidies of up to 90 percent on essential medications under an agreement reached with the Treasury, the Health Ministry and his own ministry.
It’s a commendable move, but one that raises disturbing realizations. Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz and 62 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, there are tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors who are apparently in desperate need of government subsidies to buy medicine.
Absurdly, even this subsidy covers 90% of costs, not 100%. Why? What could justify allowing even one Holocaust survivor to lack basic needs in his or her last years in this world?
Furthermore, tens of thousands of elderly citizens who lived in the Former Soviet Union during the World War II but who cannot technically be defined as Holocaust survivors should also receive such subsidies, along with fully credentialed survivors of concentration camps and ghettos.
Let the Germans, Polish, and Ukrainians nitpick over such technicalities; the Jewish state shouldn’t.
BACK IN November 2007, the government approved NIS 2 billion in aid to assist needy elderly Holocaust survivors. NIS 1b. is earmarked for 2008, NIS 600 million for 2009 and NIS 400m. for this year. But there were problems tracking down eligible survivors.
In February 2009 a radio and TV campaign was launched. In the meantime, according to Ze’ev Factor, chairman of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 30 Holocaust victims are dying every day. We must do everything in our power to quickly track down Holocaust survivors and alleviate their physical suffering before it is too late.
In a report published in February, the Myers JDC Brookdale Institute estimated that, at the end of 2008, there were 233,700 Holocaust survivors in Israel. This includes anyone who lived in a Nazi-occupied country for any length of time between 1933 and 1945. It also includes those expelled from their homes by Nazi military attacks, who make up 57% of the total number of survivors and are predominately from the former Soviet Union.
About 7% of our Holocaust survivors live in closed medical institutions. Some 10% are eligible for full aid under the National Insurance Institute’s Community Long-Term Care Insurance Law – which amounts to between 16 and 18 hours of home-care a week and another 9 hours provided by Factor’s foundation. Too many receive partial aid or no aid at all.
By 2025, it is estimated that just 46,900 Holocaust survivors will remain. In the last years of their lives, Holocaust survivors suffer disproportionately more than others their age from cardiovascular disorders, insomnia and severe headaches. And about half complain that they lack money for homecare, medicine, taxi fares for medical appointments, diapers, and other basic needs not presently subsidized by the state.
In March 1951, during debates over the materializing deal with Germanyfor Holocaust reparations which would give a tremendous boost to theeconomy of the fledgling Jewish state, then-foreign minister MosheSharett told the Knesset that “The Israeli government claims thereparations for itself because it sees the State of Israel as bearingthe rights of the millions who were slaughtered...”
All themore, Sharett undoubtedly would have admitted, does the State of Israelbear the responsibility for comforting its own Holocaust survivors intheir last years. This moral obligation takes precedence over othermoral demands such as caring for Sudanese refugees or aiding theearthquake-struck Haitians. As Jewish law dictates, the impoverishedwho are close to you come first.
Sadly, terribly, the State ofIsrael was established too late to prevent the Holocaust. The veryleast that a strong Israel can do now is to care adequately for thosewho suffered most from the absence of a Jewish state.