World Jewish Congress Holocaust Memory Commissioner Charlotte Knobloch, 82, has called it "intolerable" that so many Holocaust survivors today have to live in poverty and urged the world to take action.
"It's not sufficient to commemorate those who perished in the Shoah or to condem this singular crime. We also need to address the dire situation that so many survivors are facing today, and I call on politicians, businessmen and civil society leaders in the countries concerned to act now and to help these people. The survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to lead their lives in dignity," Knobloch said.
A substantial number of the 500,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide are suffering from poverty and need urgent help to live a dignified life in their last years, Stuart Eizenstat, the US special adviser on Holocaust issues, said on Wednesday.
"It's really unacceptable that those people who in their youth suffered so grievously should have to live out their declining years in deprivation, isolation and poverty," Eizenstat, a special adviser on Holocaust issues to US Secretary of State John Kerry, told the news agency AFP.
"In New York City alone, of the 60,000 survivors, 50 per cent are in that state. In Israel about a third are, and in the former Soviet Union countries upwards of 85-90 per cent are in poverty," he said on the sidelines of a conference in Prague.
"All the surveys indicate that substantial percentages of those (survivors) are living in poverty or near poverty," Eizenstat added. The two-day "Living in Dignity" conference was organized by the European Shoah Legacy Institute to monitor implementation of the 2009 Terezin Declaration which was signed by 47 countries and the European Union.
Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria who as a child survived the Holocaust in Germany, highlighted the fact that two thirds of Holocaust survivors still alive are women who are drawing small pensions, and that some countries levy taxes on special payments going to Shoah survivors. Knobloch declared: "The abysmal situation in which many survivors find themselves today is something the world must not accept. These people became the victims of the most perfidious crime against humanity, and many of them have dedicated their entire lives to the fight against racism, anti-Semitism and in favor of freedom, peace, democracy, tolerance and human dignity. Now, they are entitled to receive the support from those whose rights they defended.
"We must do all to ensure that Holocaust survivors can live their twilight years in dignity," Knobloch urged.
Photo: Detlev Schilke
