Bergen County–As the victims of Nazi brutality age, their numbers decrease, but the costs of care go up. A major increase in Claims Conference allocations 2015–more than double–will help ensure coverage for those costs.

“We are blessed with a significant number of Holocaust survivors in this area,” said Susan Greenbaum, Executive Director, Jewish Family Service of Bergen and North Hudson. She deems the new allocations “Fantastic. The money will be well spent.”

She noted that the agency has been sustaining a sufficient deficient because until now Claims Conference allocations did not meet the increasing needs of the decreasing number of survivors. Homecare is vital to allow ‘aging in place.’ The term refers to living where you have lived for many years, in a home and community that is familiar. When senior citizens experience an abrupt change of location a certain amount of control evaporates and with it comes a loss of dignity, quality of life and independence.

Aging in place necessitates being able to receive services they might require as needs change. Homecare needs of elderly people vary but include light housekeeping and cooking, while more infirm individuals may require help with basic activities of daily living, such as dressing and hygiene.

According to a survey by the American Association of Retired People, most American seniors want to live out their lives in their homes.

German-born Hela Tannenbaum, 86, a client of the Jewish Family Service here, is a homebound physically frail but vibrant woman, whose displaced childhood was spent hiding, running and working as a slave laborer during WWII. She is able to get around her home with the aid of a walker. From Monday through Friday, thanks to the Jewish Family Service, an aide comes to her home for 3 hours in the late afternoon. Hela is unable to leave her house alone and getting out with the aide is difficult. “In the afternoon, especially late afternoon, I do not have strength,” she says. “If it was in the morning I would have a better chance to go out.”

Hela has lived in Teaneck for about 35 years, she says. She no longer knows many of her neighbors but she is very happy to be able live in her own home and hopes that she will not have to move. “I may in any event have to do that,” she says with stoic sadness, “but I will deal with that when it comes.”

The majority of 2015 Claims Conference allocations to 12 New Jersey social service agencies, a 127 percent increase from last year, is earmarked to homecare. According to a press release from the Claims Conference, theirs “is the only organization assisting Holocaust survivors worldwide by supporting homecare and other vital services specifically for Nazi victims.”

In a telephone conversation, Claims Conference President Julius Berman, says that the “highlight of this decision by the German government reflects an understanding and acceptance of the increasing need for homecare. This has been difficult to comprehend. But the fact is that fewer people require more care.”

Another factor, he mentions, is their awareness that an elderly fragile person who went through the victimization of the Holocaust is not in same physical or emotional condition as a person of the same age who had a more blessed life.

“Empathy fatigue,” can also be a problem, he says. “People get tired. Doctors or nurses and other professions who deal with death on a daily basis can become overwhelmed or inured. That has been our fear with the German government and the German population in general. The German people with whom we are now dealing are 2 or even 3 generations removed from the Holocaust. I am pleasantly surprised that the current Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schauble has gone out of his way to tell the country that their obligations are not yet over.”

Julius Berman also notes that the allocations extend care beyond those who suffered in concentration camps. “Initially the primary focus was on people in concentration camps, the German records made it easy to identify those victims.”

Now more victims have been identified. We are able to help people “who were in ghettos and those who escaped behind the Iron Curtain. As Germans were getting closer and closer some Jews were able to run away from their homes and then come back but their homes were already taken. We are able to help individuals from many areas especially in the FSU which also includes the Baltic States. Some people were never in a ghetto or camp but suffered greatly.”

The increased allocations are a product of intensive negotiations with Germany. Support for homecare has been an urgent priority for more than a decade. According to the Claims Conference press release, “In 2013, the Claims Conference brought this message to its annual negotiations with the German government. The resulting agreement yielded a landmark $1 billion sum to be allocated by the Claims Conference through 2017.”

Helen Weiss Pincus is a freelance writer, senior fitness consultant, and Bubby.

By Helen Weiss Pincus