Report: 14,800 Holocaust survivors pass away in 2019

Finance ministry says billions transferred to survivors in direct payments and benefits; about two-thirds of survivors receive only a few hundred shekels every month

Amir Alon|

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The Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority at the Ministry of Finance published a report  Wednesday, on the condition of Holocaust survivors and victims of anti-Semitic persecution during World War II living in Israel, which showed some 14,800 of them passed away in 2019.
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According to the report, compiled ahead of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, there are some 192,000 people living in Israel who have been recognized as Holocaust survivors or victims of anti-Semitic persecution, including Moroccan and Algerian Jews who lived under the French Vichy regime and survivors of the Farhud pogroms in Iraq.
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Yellow badge used to distinguish Jews from the general population during the Nazi regime 
(Photo: Reuters)
About 74,000 (39%) of survivors are over the age of 85 and 839 are over the age of 100.
About two-thirds of Holocaust survivors receive a monthly stipend of a few hundred shekels from the state.
The Authority said that over the past year, more than NIS 5 billion were transferred to survivors in direct payments or in the form of benefits.
About 59,000 survivors, who lived through the ghettos and concentration camps or lived under a false identity or in hiding, receive between NIS 2,420 ($1800) and NIS 6,078 ($700) in monthly payments. 
Some 17,630 low-income survivors receive increased payments that could reach up to NIS 11,118 ($3200) a month and a further 133,000 survivors are eligible for an extra yearly stipend, whose overall cost up to around NIS 604 million. Additionally, some 18,000 widows of Holocaust survivors also receive allowances.
Besides direct payments, survivors are also fully exempt from paying for medicine (estimated at a total cost of NIS 415 million), nursing services (NIS 439 million), medical treatment and medical equipment (NIS 132 million).
To ensure as many survivors as possible receive their rights, the Authority's personnel have paid over 51,000 visits over the past two years to homes of survivors and other Israelis identified by the authority as eligible for rights, sent out over 40,000 letters and made over 32,000 phone calls – granting additional rights worth NIS 381 million.