Social affairs ministry to present new multi-million dollar initiative designed to provide tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors with much needed, long overdue aid

Yael Barnovsky Published: 05.21.07, 05:46

Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday and present him with the key principles of a new initiative put together by his office in cooperation with various organizations involved in aiding Holocaust survivors.
Herzog, who in April lamented the deplorable situation of many elderly survivors in Israel, pledged that his office would now shoulder the responsibility of caring for them.
The initiative includes expanding the current criteria used by the state to identify an individual as a Holocaust survivor, thereby bringing in some 150,000 survivors, mostly new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, into the fold of those eligible for stipends.

MORE.

By RUTH EGLASH
Print Subscribe
E-mail Toolbar

Social welfare groups and activists working on behalf of the elderly population welcomed the publication Monday of a 60-page document aimed at alleviating the economic hardships faced by more than a quarter of Israel’s 260,000 Holocaust survivors.

The plan was compiled by an interministerial committee headed by Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog. It was created following a public outcry last month over the plight of survivors who receive no government benefits and live below the poverty line, forced to chose on a daily basis between medicine or food.

“The battle we have been fighting is finally drawing results,” Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, chairman of social action party Tafnit and founding president of the Sderot Conference for Society, told The Jerusalem Post. “We have forced the government to take a serious look at the problem and draft a comprehensive plan on how to help.”

Last month, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Dayan and hundreds of others participated in an alternative ceremony. They marched from the Knesset to Yad Vashem to raise awareness about survivors who still need help.

“There should not be first-class and second-class survivors,” said Nathan Lavon, director of the pensioners’ rights group Ken Lazaken. He said Herzog’s plan broadened the definition of who is a Holocaust survivor, a subject that has fallen under much debate in recent years.

MORE.

For Immediate Release May 17, 2007

Holocaust Documentation and Education Center Convenes its Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting

Harry A. “Hap” Levy, president of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, Inc., is pleased to announce that the Center=s twenty-seventh Annual Meeting will be held on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 1:00 p.m. at the Hollywood Beach Culture and Community Center, 1301 S. Ocean Drive, Hollywood, Florida.

“The Center has reached an important milestone. After twenty-seven years, we are knee deep in the planning and construction of the first South Florida Holocaust Museum, which will be a unique setting of memory and hope. This Museum will challenge the hearts and minds of present and future generations and will leave each visitor changed. The exhibition will be in English and Spanish and will include testimonies of South Florida Survivors, liberators, and rescuers. We will also have a rail car of the type used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to transport millions of Jews to concentration camps and to their untimely deaths. The car will remain unaltered in its “war transportation” state and will receive only minor treatments for preservation and visitor safety. It will be permanently installed on “dead tracks” at the southwest corner of South 21st Avenue and Harrison Street, just ½ block from the new museum,” said Harry A. Levy, president.

Also featured at the Annual Meeting will be the highlights of the Center’s documentation and educational efforts over the past twenty-six years. Certificates of appreciation will be presented to each of the Survivors and liberators, who have given their testimony to the Center during this past year. The Center=s acclaimed oral history collection of over 2,400 is the largest, self-produced, standardized archive of Holocaust interviews in the country. Licensed copies of the Center=s collection continue to be provided to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Annually, the Center holds a Writing and Visual Arts Holocaust Remembrance Contest for Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach students in elementary, middle, and high schools. Awards will be presented to each of the student winners of this year’s contest, which was entitled “The Holocaust and the Children: Its Youngest Victims.” First place winners in each category will share their entries and will be presented with awards. The overall winner is Traver Dodoye, Coconut Crrek High School, Grade 11. The first place winners for visual arts are Twiggy Boyar and Meynardo Garcia, Coconut Creek High School, Grade 11; Olivia Argiro, Highland Oaks Middle School, Grade 8; Roxanne Nall, Cutler Ridge Elementary School, Grade 5. The first place winners for writing are Jennifer Green, Boca Raton High School, Grade 12; Talya Rejtman, Pioneer Middle School, Grade 7, and Veronica Perez, Highpoint Academy, Grade 5.

The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center will also honor its volunteers of the year in various categories, whose commitment and dedicated efforts have helped ensure and enrich the success of the Center’s programs and events. Special awards will be given to several volunteers for their tremendous dedication and devotion to ensuring that the authentic memory of the Holocaust will be preserved and perpetuated.

For further information, please contact Rositta E. Kenigsberg, Executive Vice President at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center at 954-929-5690.

By RUTH EGLASH

Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog will present to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday a new plan to ensure increased financial aid and general assistance to Israel’s estimated 260,000 Holocaust survivors.

Organizations working with the elderly believe that more than 40 percent of Israel’s Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line, with many of those who arrived in the state over the past 15 years failing to qualify for financial aid via German reparations or Israel’s standard Holocaust law, which only defines as survivors those who were direct victims of Nazi concentration camps or ghettos.

A spokeswoman for the minister told The Jerusalem Post that following the recent Holocaust Remembrance Day, when attention was raised to the plight faced by many survivors here, Herzog decided to take on the responsibility for improving their situation. In the past, the Finance Ministry - and not the Welfare and Social Services Ministry - was in charge of distributing aid.

Herzog’s plan includes an increase to the overall annual budget and a raise in the monthly stipends for all survivors whose incomes are below a certain level, as well as improvements to health provisions, increased rental subsidies and physical and emotional support.

NIS 1.5b plan for Holocaust survivors draws fire
By Ruth Sinai

Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog will submit a NIS 1.5 billion plan for assisting needy Holocaust survivors to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today. The proposal would give some 170,000 elderly survivors stipends of up to NIS 1,040 a month. Some NIS 1.2 billion would cover the stipends, and another NIS 300 million would cover services.

But the plan, which would apply only to people who do not already receive survivor benefits from either the Israeli government or a foreign government, has aroused opposition from both welfare professionals and the Finance Ministry. Its detractors charge that it is populist, too expensive, defines survivors too broadly and could encourage other population groups to demand special assistance as well.

Instead, detractors propose, the government should simply increase the standard old-age allowance for needy senior citizens. That, they argued, would both cost less and avoid discrimination against the elderly who did not immigrate from Europe. Moreover, the detractors said, most of those whom Herzog’s plan would cover are people who moved to Israel from the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s, and they already receive supplemental government assistance as needy immigrants.

The plan, based on the proposals of an interministerial committee, includes three elements: financial aid, a basket of health and welfare services and help in obtaining benefits to which needy survivors may not be aware that they are entitled. All of these elements would be anchored in legislation.

Under this plan, any survivor whose monthly income is less than NIS 3,221 for an individual or NIS 4,269 for a couple would receive a supplement of up to NIS 1,040 per month - the equivalent of the minimum grant given to those survivors who currently receive stipends from the Finance Ministry.

This grant would cost an estimated NIS 1.2 billion in 2008 and less each succeeding year, as survivors are dying off at an estimated rate of 12,450 per year.

The plan defines a survivor as anyone who was in Germany, occupied German territory or a country ruled by a German ally during the Holocaust. Under this definition, there are currently some 256,000 survivors in Israel, of whom about 40 percent immigrated before 1953 and 35 percent in the 1990s. Overall, some 23 percent of survivors are thought to live in poverty, but among immigrants from the 1990s, the rate reaches 42 percent.

Of these 256,000 people, almost 170,000 currently receive no benefits from any source - either the Israeli government or the governments of Germany, Austria, Holland and Belgium. Existing Israeli law does not grant survivor benefits to people who moved to Israel after 1953.

The proposed basket of services, including nursing care, medical equipment, rent subsidies and psychological counseling, would cost some NIS 300 million a year.

2007 Holocaust Art & Writing Contest Winners Announced

Contest Draws Record 700 Student Entries from Midwest Students

More than 30 winners of the 5th Annual Holocaust Museum Art & Writing Contest will be announced at an awards ceremony this Sunday, May 20. There were 700 student entries in two categories – writing and art— from 60 middle and high schools in Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin. This year’s event set a new record for participation.

Award recipients, along with friends and families, will attend the ceremony, where they will receive their prizes, meet their creative peers, view and read the work of other teens in what is an exciting and very poignant afternoon.

The contest is dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million children who perished during the Holocaust and is underwritten by Dr. Ira and Judy Gall, in honor of their grandchildren.

“This contest is a wonderful opportunity for students to voice their feelings about the lessons of the Holocaust. For these young artists and writers, this project is cathartic. By expressing themselves through their art, these students think about the importance of finding ways for people to exist harmoniously without prejudice,” said Dan Reich, Holocaust Museum director of education and curator.

Cash prizes will be awarded to all winners in each of the writing and art divisions for those in grades 6-8 and 9-12. Winning entries will be displayed in the Holocaust Museum Theater and at the St. Louis Galleria from June 12-July 8.

For the writing division, students prepared a poem, newspaper article, story, play/dialogue or essay. To make an art entry, students created sculptures, drawings, photographs, paintings, posters, CDs, a collage or video.

Contest judges were: Writing: L.D. Brodsky, poet, writer, publisher; Lolle Boettcher, Holocaust educator, middle school educator (retired); Dana Humphrey, Holocaust educator, middle school educator; Sandy Snodgrass, high school and college educator; Visual arts: Craig Norton, artist; Philip Slein, director, Philip Slein Gallery; and Roseann Weiss, Regional Arts Commission.

Contest Chair is Rachel Katzman.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM ART & WRITING CONTEST WINNERS

Winners: Writing Division I (6th - 8th Grade)

1st place ($300) Michael Detmering, Mary Emily Bryan School, St. Charles

2nd place ($200) Kelsey Twiehaus, Holy Rosary School, Warrenton

3rd place ($100) Keely Marie Thurman, Our Lady of the Assumption, Beloit, WI

Honorable Mention ($25) Ben Colagiovanni, Wydown Middle School, St. Louis

HM ($25) Marcie K. Veit, St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Florissant, MO

HM ($25) Maggie Edzon, Our Lady of the Assumption, Beloit, WI

Winners: Writing Division 2 (9th -12th Grade)

1st place: Matt Mallon, Edwardsville High School, Edwardsville, IL

2nd place: Kayela Lages, Pacific High School, Pacific, MO

3rd place: Lindsay Schein, Crossroads College Preparatory School, St. Louis

HM; Grace Dorhauer, Gateway Academy, Chesterfield, MO
HM: Paul Laneri, Gateway Academy, Chesterfield, MO

Winners: Visual Arts Division 1 (6th - 8th Grade)

1st place: Emily Kroll, St. Justin Martyr, St. Louis, MO

2nd Place: Missy Jagodzinski, Riverton Middle school, Riverton, IL

3rd Place: Jakob Junker, Holy Rosary School, Warrenton, MO

HM: Abby Gallagher, St. Clement of Rome, St. Louis, MO

HM: Sarah Conner, Annunziata, St. Louis, MO

HM: Matthew Foster, Annunziata, St. Louis, MO

HM: Seth Khan, Annunziata, St. Louis, MO

HM: Pheobe Mendelson, Flynn Park Elementary, St. Louis, MO

Special GROUP Honorable Mention: “Team Success”, Hazelwood West Middle School, St. Louis, MO

Winners: Visual Arts Division 2 (9th - 12th Grade)

1st place: Heather Gemmell, Marble Springs Academy (home schooled) Barnhart, MO

2nd place: Emily Young, Valley Park High School, Valley Park, MO

3rd Place Elaina Marshall, Gillespie High School, Gillespie, IL

HM: Monica Wilson, Pacific High School, Pacific, MO

HM: Mindy Lattue, Sturgeon High School, Sturgeon, MO

HM: Kayla Rehagen, Fatima High School, Westphalia, MO

HM: Michael Swartz, Sturgeon High School, Sturgeon, MO

HM: Hannah Borg, Ladue Horton Watkins High School, St. Louis, MO

HM, Amanda Packman, Parkway North High School, St. Louis, MO

HM: Jacquelyn Ruiz, Gibault High School, Waterloo, IL

Testimony of Paul A. Shapiro

Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe

“Opening up of the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives in Germany”

March 28, 2007

Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Members of the Committee, Survivors of the Holocaust, Ladies and Gentlemen.

On behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I would like to thank the Committee for organizing this important hearing regarding the archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Who would believe that six decades after the end of World War II an archival repository of 35 to 50 million pages of documentation relating to the fates of 17.5 million people victimized by the Nazis would remain virtually inaccessible to survivors and their families and absolutely closed to scholarly and other research? Who would believe that 11 democratic governments, including our own, have exercised supervisory control over the repository and thus, whether knowingly or not, or placing a higher value on diplomatic consensus than on human compassion, bore responsibility for keeping the documentation hidden? And who would believe that those governments and the International Committee of the Red Cross—all with admirable records of humanitarian good deeds, and many with very positive records of confronting Holocaust-related issues—appeared ready to see the last remnant of the Holocaust survivor generation disappear from our midst without providing them with the reassurance that the records of what happened to them and to the loved ones they lost would not be conveniently kept under wraps? No one would believe it, and yet this has been the situation.

The archives of the International Tracing Service constitute the most extensive collection of records in one place tracing the fates of people from across Europe–Jews of course, but members of virtually every other nationality as well–who were arrested, deported, sent to concentration camps, and murdered by the Nazis; who were put to forced and slave labor under inhuman conditions calculated in many instances to result in death; and who were displaced from their homes and families and unable to return home at war’s end.

more.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the International Tracing
Service Archive
By Sara J. Bloomfield

There has recently been substantial misinformation on an issue of vital importance to Holocaust survivors - the opening of the International Tracing Service (ITS) archive. It is important to set the record straight. The survivors deserve better.

Located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, the ITS, the largest closed Holocaust archive in the world, is being prepared to be accessible beyond the ITS for the first time since it was created over 60 years ago. This is happening only because of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the extraordinary and tireless efforts of Paul Shapiro, the director of its Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

Over the past few years, the Museum has led an aggressive effort to open this critically important collection. Working with the US State Department, the International Red Cross, and ten other nations, we pressed this urgent case in multiple ways. The urgency, of course, was for the survivors, many of whom appealed to us to help them receive information about the fate of their loved ones.

The ITS archive is controlled by an 11-nation treaty signed in 1955, and a number of signatories insisted on amending the treaty before the archive could be made public. As a result of our efforts in the past year, the US, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, the UK, Germany and Belgium have approved amendments to the treaty. France, Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg are in the process of doing so. There is a complicated legal process that could not be circumvented. The treaty and its amendments can be easily accessed on the ITS website www.ITS-arolsen.org.

Because of the time-consuming process of national approvals by 11 countries, the Museum pushed for a two-track process —working on digitizing, hardware, software, and finding aids, while simultaneously advancing the political process so that no more precious time is lost.

A critical part of the breakthrough in opening the archive was the agreement that each country designate one repository with the technological, archival, and historical expertise to handle the material and serve the survivors and their families as well as historians. Along with Yad Vashem, the Museum is the world’s leading center of Holocaust documentation, research and education. No other institution in the world comes remotely close to these two institutions in their capacity to manage this material. And, indeed Yad Vashem will hold the material for Israel.

The archive is enormous. The first batch of digitized material, expected to arrive at the Museum this fall, includes 13.5 million documents related to incarcerations, including many concentration camp records. We will also receive copies of the 40 million index cards (of the 17.5 million names) created by ITS over the years. The amount of data in this first batch alone is equivalent to approximately 8,000 CDs! (We expect the second batch, which includes slave labor records, to arrive in 2008 and the third and final batch, which includes DP records, to arrive at some point after that.)

The ITS was never set up to be used by anyone other than its own staff. The Museum must therefore take several steps to make the material usable. First, we must invest in new hardware to substantially expand the storage capacity of our network servers. Second, contrary to some assertions that grossly oversimplify accessibility, the Museum must create a special software system to make the records more easily accessible than they have been at the ITS. Third, we must train many members of our staff to use the new software so that they can respond to survivors quickly.

Naturally, we will be reaching out to the survivor community with instructions on how to contact the Museum to seek information on their families. We have teams of people already working hard on this massive, historic and expensive undertaking.

The Museum wishes to serve survivors and their families not only in the US but the world over. No survivor will be required to come to Washington. First, no survivor should be required to learn the complexities of doing research in an archive. Second, requiring survivors to come to Washington would defeat the whole purpose for which we opened this archive. It was so that our Museum could do this research for survivors and their families – and do it much faster than the ITS which often kept people waiting years for a response. It is outrageous that survivors were treated like this.

Survivors deserve a great deal. They deserve accurate information about the ITS and about the Museum. Most crucially, survivors deserve accurate and timely information about their families. In spite of what some people would have them believe, the Museum will help those survivors whose family records are in the ITS archive get that information – at long last.

The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants recognizes Israel Singer’s extraordinary accomplishments on behalf of Holocaust survivors, but the organization cannot support his re-election as president of the Claims Conference.

Survivors voice outrage
at museum over archive
Courtesy Edwin Black
The International Tracing Service’s Bad Arolsen archive.
By Edwin Black Published: 05/11/2007

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Holocaust survivors are venting their anger at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum over its decision not to allow immediate electronic access to the long-secret records of the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Second generation have complained in the past about the museum’s fundraising and other issues, but a dispute over prohibiting immediate remote access to the Bad Arolsen documentation — the way other government documents are accessed — brought many in the Holocaust community to express their anger publicly as never before.

The documents are expected to be transferred to the Holocaust museum here under an international treaty. The archives include millions of images relating to concentration-camp prisoner documents.

“Where does the museum get the chutzpah?” asked David Schaecter, president of the Miami-based Holocaust Survivors Foundation. He singled out Paul Shapiro, director of the museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the point man for the Bad Arolsen transfer.

“I don’t know how in the name of God Shapiro can look at himself in the mirror,” especially after his March 28 testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, Schaecter said. Schaecter sat next to Shapiro as they testified to the House about the need to bring the Bad Arolsen documents to America.

Shapiro did not respond to calls seeking comment. Arthur Berger, a senior adviser to the museum on external affairs, defended him.

“Paul Shapiro has probably done more than any individual in the world to get this archive opened,” Berger said. “He has literally worked day and night to fulfill our moral responsibility to help survivors get information and not allow them to pass away without finding out more information about themselves and their families.”

Berger said the museum was waiting for the material to be released before it could provide specifics of how it would make the material available. But he said the museum was committed to making the archive widely accessible.

more.