Israel marks Holocaust, some 208,000 survivors remain

May 1, 2011, 10:52 GMT

Tel Aviv - Some 208,000 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel, a non-profit organization which assists the aging victims said Sunday, as the country's prime minister warned of persisting anti-Israeli sentiments.

Half of the survivors are older than 80, and every day about 35 die, said the Tel Aviv-based Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel.

It published the results on the eve of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was to begin at sunset Sunday and end at sunset Monday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the occasion to warn that 66 years after the end of World War II, anti-Israeli sentiments remained strong around the world.

'The important question that must be asked today is: Have we learned the lessons of the Holocaust in the world? And to our great regret, the answer is no,' he said.

'Hatred of Jews and the denial of their existence have turned into hatred of the Jewish State and denial of its existence,' he told his cabinet.

A Sunday evening ceremony at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institute was to open the 24 hours of memorial services.

On Monday, a two-minute siren is scheduled to wail throughout the country and Israel will come to a standstill, with cars stopping in the streets and pedestrians pausing in honour of the 6 million Jews who were murdered in World War II.

Some 74,000 of survivors living in Israel were once held in camps or confined to ghettos, while the remaining 134,000 are Holocaust refugees who survived the war by fleeing the Nazi horrors or going into hiding.

While in the early years after Israel's foundation, in 1948, Holocaust survivors made up about half the country's Jewish population, they today form under 4 per cent.

Their number is dwindling fast - about nearly 13,000 die each year, said the Holocaust survivors foundation.

That means that in some 16 years no one will be left in Israel to tell the story of the Holocaust first hand.

The foundation commissioned a study by an Israeli-Jewish American social research centre, the Meyers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, which found that survivors sometimes live in difficult conditions.

Some 40 per cent of the survivors reported loneliness. Around 20 per cent said they did not have enough heating in the winter. About 5 per cent said they did not have enough food, while another 25 per cent said they had enough to meet their daily needs, but not the kind they would like. Many also suffer from age-related health problems.

Foundation chairman Elazar Stern said the results of the study showed that the need for assistance among aging Holocaust survivors would only grow in the coming years.

'The young generation won't forgive us if we don't care for the older generation with the respect that it deserves,' he said.

'We are in a race against time,' added CEO Rony Kalinsky, noting that also those without socio-economic problems needed help 'coping with loneliness and the distress that stems from their harsh past.'

As fewer Holocaust survivors remain alive, the Israeli government has launched a campaign, 'Collecting the Fragments.' It has also called on Israelis to bring personal belongings from the time of the Holocaust, which bear testimony to the atrocities and can help perpetuate the memory, to a collection point in Yad Vashem and elsewhere in the country.

Items sought include letters, documents, diaries, photographs, paintings and drawings.

Read more about Holocaust

Read more about Israel History