1 in 3 Holocaust survivors can’t afford all the groceries they need — survey

In a new survey of 400 Israeli Holocaust survivors, more than a third of respondents said that they didn’t have enough money to buy certain food items in the past month, and required additional financial assistance to get the groceries they needed. More than half of survivors indicated financial difficulties.

The poll, published this week ahead of Israel’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year falls on May 6, suggests that large numbers of survivors in Israel, a group assessed at some 120,000-130,000, are struggling to get by financially, emotionally, societally and also physically.

Asked about their financial state in relation to their health, 24% of respondents said they could not afford some medical tests, while 20% had to make do without medical instruments, such as mobility scooters and walkers.

Only 7% said they could not afford medicines, which the state generally subsidizes for all categories of survivors. More than 10% of survivors said they can’t afford to make all the rooms in their homes accessible to them.

Slightly more than half of survivors surveyed said they had trouble paying their bills, and 30% said they could not afford personal hygiene products. Nearly a quarter, or 23%, said they encountered a situation this year where they could not afford an electric appliance they needed. More than 15% of respondents said they can’t afford a burial plot.

Half of the survivors polled in the survey by the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Survivors said they would like to get out of their homes more often, but stay inside because they have no one to accompany them. Nearly a fifth of the survivors said they were unable to leave home at all. Nearly two-thirds of respondents live alone, and 41% said they suffer from loneliness.

Illustrative: A carer walks with an elderly woman on Jaffa Street in downtown Jerusalem on July 2, 2023. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Asked to indicate which activities they would like to perform more often, the most common answer was to go out to the park (25%) followed by activities for senior citizens (12%) and watching television (12%).

Israeli Holocaust survivors have for years lobbied for greater financial assistance from the state, including in a series of street protests in 2007.

Multiple governments have in recent years allocated new funds to this end, but approximately 25% of Holocaust survivors living in Israel remain below the poverty line, according to data provided last year by the National Insurance Institute.

Activists seeking greater state assistance for Holocaust survivors say this is largely because tens of thousands of survivors who immigrated to Israel after October 1953 are ineligible for monthly compensation pensions from the state, which are paid to other survivors as part of Israel’s Reparations Agreement with Germany.

In 2012 an Israeli court rejected a petition by such survivors, who argued the rules were unfair because the Iron Curtain had prevented many of them from immigrating to Israel before October 1953.