70% of living Holocaust survivors will be gone in next 10 years, report shows

By AP 22 April 2025, 8:49 am

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File: A man walks through the gate of the Sachsenhausen Nazi death camp with the phrase 'Arbeit macht frei' (work sets you free) on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, Germany, Jan. 27, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Eighty years after the Holocaust, more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years — meaning time is running out to hear the voices of the last generation who suffered through one of the worst atrocities in history.

Currently, the survivors’ median age is 87, and more than 1,400 of them are over 100 years old, a new report says.

“We have known that this population of survivors would be the last, our final opportunity to hear their first-hand testimonies, to spend time with them, our last chance to meet a survivor,” says Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference, which published the study.

The report’s analysis of population projections and mortality rates provides details through 2040. It is based on the extensive data collected since 1952 by the Claims Conference, which includes survivors who receive direct payments or social welfare services funded by the organization as a result of ongoing negotiations with Germany.

Notably, nearly 50% of all Holocaust survivors will pass away within the next six years, while 70% will die within 10 years and 90% within 15 years, according to the report titled “ Vanishing Witnesses.”

Those still alive are often of frail health and suffer from ailments that come with age and have been amplified by traumas in their youth.