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Mostly Cloudy Surviving surviving
First Nazis, then poverty
By Malka Eisenberg
Issue of June 19, 2009 / 27 Sivan 5769
Helen G. survived Auschwitz and Mengele's experiments on twins and grew up in an orphanage in the United States, but the agony of those years haunts her still. When poverty threatened to make her homeless and hungry, The Blue Card, a financial aid organization for Holocaust survivors, helped with her mortgage and food.
Helen's case is not an isolated one. One fourth of all Holocaust survivors, about 30,000 in the United States, live at or near the federal poverty level, said Elie Rubinstein, executive director of Blue Card, Inc. Although poverty has been a problem among survivors since the war’s end, “the issue of needy Holocaust survivors is not often on the radar screen,” said Rubinstein. “They are isolated and basically forgotten. In the Jewish community we don't talk about needy Holocaust survivors.”
When Joe Klein, a HAFTR eighth grader, heard of the problem, he convinced his Language Arts teacher to allow him to make it his thesis project, but in a video format.
“First I said there's no such thing,” recalled Ms. Adrienne Marks, Klein's teacher. Poverty in Holocaust survivors “was too horrific for me to believe.” After Joe's father called Marks, she agreed, “if in fact it is true and we can help even a handful of people.”
At the end of eighth grade, each HAFTR student is required to submit a research paper on a secular topic that also touches on Judaism, Marks explained, with topics
as diverse as the Warsaw ghetto and Jewish pirates. HAFTR head of school Rabbi David Leibtag originated the concept 10 years ago as middle school principal.
Joe researched survivor agencies through the internet, and made contacts, writing questions, often on his own. His father, Harold Klein, the owner of a corporate video company, worked with him, going to all the video shoots and discussing the interviews with him. The youngest of four brothers, Joe followed in the footsteps of two of them, producing a video report for his thesis.
“I want to help these heroes before they reach 120,” he said. “You don't have to spend $4 on coffee –– that's lunch for these people.”
After viewing Joe's video, called “Surviving Surviving,” the eighth grade classes collected $610 for the survivors.
“The wider society doesn't realize that they are living in poverty,” pointed out Akira Ohiso, a social worker who has worked with survivors. “They think of them as Bubbie and Zaidy, not as a person on food stamps. They think they are now in America and safe but don't realize they are facing aging issues without money.”
Poverty stems from a lack of family, either lost in the Holocaust or from not marrying, not having children, or children who pre-deceased the parents, noted Ohiso, now a director of the Supportive Services Program at senior housing developments in New York City.
Many survivors live on a fixed income, don't have assets, were not eligible for claims conference benefits (Holocaust reparations) and, when they came to the United States after the war were only able to get modestly paying jobs, often with no benefits or minimal, if any, pension, said Rubinstein.
“The problem is more now, every year the amount we give goes up,” stressed Rubinstein. “It's a paradox.”
He noted that there are fewer survivors now since many are dying and yet the expenses are increasing. Twenty years ago they were younger, had fewer health problems, had jobs and insurance. Now they are aged 67 and older and need financial help. One 107-year-old survivor needs home care 24/7, he noted, and “often the government will pay half, but you can't live alone at 107.”
The public is less aware of the problem, assuming that there are no survivors left or that there are no “poor Jews,” said Elihu Kover, vice president for Nazi Victim Services at Selfhelp community services, an organization that helps elderly people
and others in need, founded in 1936 by refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. He noted that 51 percent of survivors are “considered impoverished” statistically and that they are “serving three times more [people] than 10 years ago. It's a hidden population.”
Blue Card is strictly a financial aid organization for destitute Holocaust survivors and assists through referrals by other social services programs. This keeps overhead low, said Rubinstein, and keeps the survivors connected to the Jewish community in their area. Other organizations that help survivors include the Nazi victims program of Selfhelp, Bikur Cholim of Boro Park, ivolunteerny, Jewish Family Services, JASA and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in New York.
“We can't save these people from trauma,” said Ohiso. “There's a lot of mental illness in survivors. The reverberations from the Holocaust are still in their daily decisions. They mistrust the mailman, the grocery store clerk, thinking they are Nazis. Their fear makes it hard to get out in the world and be productive, but there are concrete ways to help them, such as with home care and letting them tell their stories to younger people. They are very concerned that their voices will disappear once they die. It is so traumatic; they never get over it. Maybe they have something to teach us.”
“It's a tremendous mitzvah to help these people,” added Harold Klein.
