Fifty thousand Israeli Holocaust survivors subsisting under the poverty line and 143,000 more according FWHS (the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Survivors), are thrilled that Netanyahu’s Cabinet finally approved a bill on the day before Yom HaShoah to distribute one billion NIS per year ($287,894,000) to allow them to live and die with a bit of dignity. Many have waited 61 years to see some equity in the distribution of aid, while 30,000 a year die, many in desperate poverty. Some members of the Knesset considered them a drain on the economy and refused to allow any subsidies for them, although when they first came to Israel they signed their restitution monies to the government so the infrastructure of a new state could be built. In return, they were promised that they would be cared for when they aged. That did not turn out to be the case.
“We have a moral obligation to see to it that Holocaust survivors living among us can live out their lives honorably,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the day the bill for survivor funds finally passed. He has been accused, for decades, of ignoring the needs of the living survivors, while using the Holocaust in his speeches as a political tool.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who joined the government only after he extracted a promise for funding for Holocaust survivors, has been pushing for aid for Holocaust survivors since he came to office. “Today we are changing the priorities and correcting the injustice of many decades in which the survivors were abandoned, pushed aside and lost in the great tangle known as Israeli bureaucracy. It is unconceivable that those who managed to survive the worst atrocities of human society will not survive the Israeli bureaucracy. This, we change today.”
The FWHS stated that 127,380 Holocaust survivors receive an income of NIS 3,000 ($859) a month. Another 18,000 receive less than the equivalent of $500 a month.
Not all of them will be eligible for this distribution, said Colette Avital former consul general in New York City and head of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel—an umbrella group representing 50 organizations that assist Holocaust survivors there.
She told JLBC that these funds will be distributed to survivors who did not get allocations from the Ministry’s Authority for Holocaust Survivors—basically those who made aliya (immigration to Israel) after 1953 (when the last displaced persons’ camps were closed).
But they will still have to wait. Avital said Lapid it took 21 days to write up the legislation and was read three times during which changes were made in the bill. She said it is also difficult to say when funds will be distributed because it could take two to three months for the legislation to go into effect.
Asked if there is any connection between these funds and the assets held by Hashava, the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets, Avital said there is no connection to them and that the government allocated funds for this purpose. (No information was made available as to what, if any cuts were made in other programs to put aside this money.)
The package, which is in addition to NIS 835,000 ($240,391,490) as part of a five-year support plan that has already been allocated for survivors, by Finance Minister Lapid and could increase the income of about 18,000 survivors by about $1,000.00 each.
There are 10 initiatives in the plan, one of which will allow transfers of allowances directly to survivors’ bank accounts. Also, money received from the Holocaust Survivors Rights Authority will no longer be included to determine income. NIS 277 million will be allocated to 18,000 survivors who made aliya after 1953 to equate their allowance with those who came before. This will increase their allowances from about NIS 1,800 to NIS 5,400, and other “categories” and conditions will benefit thousands more, including emergency funds for the most desperately poor survivors.
Avital said, “The Center of Organizations has been fighting for many years to enlarge the benefits for Holocaust survivors such as pensions and health care. We have been in constant touch with the Minister of Finance Yair Lapid and his staff from the day he was sworn in and believe that we have had a part in bringing to his attention some of the issues which still needed to be addressed and in convincing him to do so. However one should mention that this is the first Minister of Finance who has gone out of his way to allocate such unprecedented budget.”
By Anne Phyllis Pinzow
