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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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FIRST 6,000 OF 60,0000 ASSETS FROM ISRAELI BANKS ARE LISTED ON THE NET BY ISRAELI ORGANIZATION
combined services

NAMES WILL BE ADDED AS THEY ARE MADE AVAILABLE.

SEE WWW.AMERICANGATHERING.COM FOR FIRST SIX THOUSAND NAMES IN ENGLISH or in Hebrew at http://www.hashava.org.il

ALL APPLICATIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO HASHAVA in ISRAEL. EITHER FILL OUT THE FORMS ON THEIR WEBSITE, OR PRINT OUT THE FORMS AND MAIL THEM VIA REGULAR MAIL TO HASHAVA PO BOX 927 BNAI BRAK ISRAEL 51108

APPLICATIONS ARE IN THE FORTHCOMING EDITION OF TOGETHER, WHICH SHOULD ARRIVE IN MAILBOXES IN AUGUST. ADDITIONAL NAMES WILL BE POSTED AS MADE AVAILABLE.

HASHAVA is The Company for Locating and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets, an organization established in Israel by virtue of the Holocaust Victims Property Law (5766-2006). It has published the first list of property and assets owned by Jews in Europe prior to World War Two. The list can be viewed on the organization’s website www.hashava.org.il or in alphabetized English on www.americangathering.com

Applications for the return of the assets are in the centerfold of this issue of Together, as well as on the website AND MUST BE SENT TO HASHAVA IN ISRAEL.

This list does not deal with living persons or properties and accounts outside of Israel. The list was crossed checked with the list of dead victims at Yad Vashem, and only their heirs and assigns can apply. The committee’s charge will last 15 years, and they will assist in searching for heirs and assigns.

Any person who thinks they may be entitled to make a claim as an heir of those who were killed by the Germans and their collaborators, regardless of whether or not the assets in question are listed, should contact the organization via its website, http://www.hashava.org.il

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Olmert approves budget for Holocaust survivors

Prime minister approves plan to improve living conditions of 120,000 elderly Holocaust survivors living in Israel. ‘These people are old and they must be helped at once, not in 2008,’ chairman of Shoah survivors’ group says

Ronny Sofer
Published: 07.30.07, 15:12 / Israel News

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert approved Monday a budget to fund government allowances to 120,000 elderly Holocaust survivors living in Israel.

An inter-ministerial committee headed by Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog drafted a plan under which millions of shekels would be funneled to assist thousands of Holocaust survivors aged over 70.

The plan allocates NIS 130 million in financial assistance to Holocaust survivors next year. The figure will be almost doubled to NIS 205 million in 2009 and NIS 300 million a year later.

The allowances come in addition to state pensions and other social benefits claimed by the survivors.

“We have fixed an injustice that lasted for 60 years. Holocaust survivors living in Israel are entitled to live in dignity instead of being unable to afford a warm meal,” Olmert told committee members.
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Sudanese defense minister says ‘24 Jewish organizations fueling conflict in Darfur’

Yaakov Lappin
Published: 07.29.07, 20:29 / Israel News

Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur” last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper. Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week.

Darfur Crisis

Sudanese minister promises his country ‘will find the way to deal with refugees’. Israel to continue aiding those fleeing Darfur until international solution is found. A journalist from Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: “Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?”

“The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning,” the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by “friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict.”

“Are these Jewish groups supporting (the rebels) financially?,” the interviewer from Okaz asked Hussein.

“Yes, they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles,” Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using “all means to fuel these conflicts.”

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false, and said: “We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or rebel actions.”

‘We came to Israel to look for a better place’

Several days ago, Sudan’s Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused “Isaeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their country.”

He added that his ministry was “very confused” by Sudanese citizens who came to Israel.”

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera television: “We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children. We came here to look for a better place.”

Meanwhile, in the US, a number of Jewish organizations have attempted to raise awareness over the plight of Sudanese citizens who face mass killings and ethnic cleansing from the Sudanese government. Some 20 Jewish organizations joined the ‘Save Darfur Coalition,’ along with other religious communities and American civil rights groups.

Published: 07/29/2007

British police will begin recording anti-Semitic crimes as racist attacks starting next year. The government also pledged additional funds to monitor antisemitic incidents in the country.

“Antisemitism has not been taken as seriously as other forms of hatred in some parts of our society,” Iain Wright, the parliamentary under secretary of state for communities and local government, said during a July 19 discussion of Britain’s All Party Inquiry into Antisemitism.

Wright also reiterated the government’s opposition to an academic boycott of Israel, calling it “anti-Jewish in principle.”

The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism was established in November 2005 to investigate the nature and extent of anti-Semitism in Britain and to make recommendations to address the problem. The report is available online at www.thepcaa.org.

Olmert vows state aid for needy Holocaust survivors

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday promised to provide state funds to needy Holocaust survivors, amid criticism over the Jewish state’s foot-dragging on the issue.

“We have defined the criteria to distribute hundreds of millions of shekels to Holocaust survivors so that each one of them can live decently,” he said during the weekly cabinet meeting.

The ministries of finance, social affairs and pensioners will sign an accord cementing these criteria on Monday, he said.

A foundation for the survivors accused the premier of dragging his feet on the issue, after he promised on April 16 during the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day to do more for an estimated 60,000-80,000 survivors in Israel living below the poverty line.

“Israel has profited by the German reparations… but has abstained from transferring from two to five billion shekels (470 million to 1.17 billion dollars) owed to the survivors of the genocide,” Gal Rotem, an official with the foundation, told AFP.

“Time is of the essence,” Rotem said. “Each month, a thousand survivors of the Nazi hell are disappearing.”

Some 250,000 Holocaust survivors are currently estimated to live in Israel.