Holocaust Remembrance Day: 147,199 Survivors Live in Israel

According to data from Israel's National Insurance Institute, over 1,000 of Israel's Holocaust survivors are above the age of 100, and their average age is 85.5. The youngest among them are 76 years old, meaning that they were born in 1946 – or that they were in utero at the end of the war, and are recognized as survivors in accordance with Israel's laws.

In 2022, 521 immigrants who escaped the fighting in Ukraine were recognized as Holocaust survivors. About 44 percent of Israel's survivors came to the country during the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, which started in 1989.

Of Israel's survivors, 37 percent were born in Asia or North Africa. Of those, 27,765 came from Morocco and Algeria, who suffered from antisemitic policies and limitations during the Vichy government's reign. Another 16,137 are Iraqi Jews who experienced the Farhud, a Nazi-inspired pogrom in Baghdad in 1941. Another thousand or so came from Tunisia and Libya, and were subjected to race laws and sent to concentration camps.

Sixty-five percent of survivors receive financial aid of some sort. In 2022, Israel's Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority put about 4.2 billion shekels (about $1.1 billion) into compensation and direct deposits for survivors. The authority gives 47,100 survivors a monthly pension of 2,617 to 6,569 shekels ($712 - $1,789). About 100,000 receive annual deposits of 6,987 shekels ($1,902).

Germany gives a stipend, in accordance with the German government's federal reparations law, to 2,800 survivors in Israel – in quarterly payments of 2,719 shekels ($740).

Bar Peleg