About a third of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. live in poverty. This group helps them. Bernard Offen knows hunger and despair. From ages 10 to 16, he survived five concentration camps during the Holocaust. Now 92, Offen divides his time between California and Poland, where he gives tours of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and shows visitors the bunk where he slept crammed with other Jewish prisoners, the building where he was tattooed with his identification number and the crematorium where his father’s body was burned. More than 59 of his extended family members in Poland perished during the ...
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Filling The Gap Local JFS agencies join with national initiative to help survivors By LOIS GOLDRICH March 3, 2021, 5:50 pm Before covid, the number of Holocaust survivors in the United States was estimated at about 80,000. That number is likely to have decreased. But sadly, even as survivors’ numbers decrease, their needs increase. Some of those needs are common to an aging population, and some are unique to survivors. But whatever their needs, survivors “deserve to live the remainder of their lives comfortably and with dignity,” said Amy Israel Pregulman of Denver, who, with her husband, John, created the nonprofit ...
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A Safety Net for Holocaust Survivors during COVID-19 Aug 16, 2020  |  by Ronda Robinson Joel Fabian, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor in Willingboro, N.J., was making ends meet by cleaning doctors' and lawyers' offices. Then the pandemic hit and he lost his three cleaning contracts. “That was a big loss financially. When the offices shut down, they no longer needed my services,” Fabian told Aish.com. One practice has reopened but with strict cleaning protocols that require certification and special equipment which he doesn’t have. Fabian, a Berlin native who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp as a child, receives a restitution stipend from Germany ...
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National initiative provides support for Palm Beach County Holocaust survivors By SERGIO CARMONA SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL | MAY 01, 2020 AT 12:31 PM Holocaust survivors in Palm Beach County are among the thousands living across the United States that are supported by a national initiative. The organizations Seed the Dream Foundation and Kavod-Ensuring Dignity for Holocaust Survivors partnered together to establish the Kavod Survivors of the Holocaust Emergency Fund. Kavod partners with Jewish social service agencies and other organizations across the country that work with survivors. Boca Raton and Palm Beach are among the more than 20 cities that are part of the ...
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As emergencies grow for Holocaust survivors amid pandemic, helpers try to keep up BY LARRY LUXNER APRIL 22, 2020 12:14 PM Louis was barely 2 years old in September 1939 when Nazi troops stormed into his Polish village near Krakow, rounded up the men and boys, gave them shovels, forced them to dig their own graves and shot them. Louis was spared because his father, who was in another city, heard what was happening and quickly arranged for a Polish friend to hide him and his mother on a farm for the war’s duration. After liberation by Russia’s Red Army in 1945, Louis ...
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