Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II,
some 245,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive
in more than 90 countries, according to a new demographic study published Tuesday.
According to the
Claims Conference
, an organization that demands compensation for Holocaust survivors, 119,300 of them reside in Israel, 38,400 in the United States, 21,900 in France and 14,200 in Germany.
In South America and the Caribbean there are about 700 survivors left alive, of which 300 in Brazil and 200 in Mexico.
Mexico, for its part, registers 100 Holocaust survivors still alive.
Flowers at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.
Photo: AP
"Almost all of the survivors still alive were children at the time of Nazi persecution; they survived camps, ghettos, escapes and life in hiding," the report states.
This despite the fact that children then had the "least chance of surviving," the document adds.
Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, explained: “The data we have collected not only tells us how many survivors and where they are, but it clearly indicates that the majority of survivors are in a period of life when their need for care and services is increasing.
Now is the time to redouble our attention to this declining population.
“Now is when they need us most.”
Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, added: “The numbers in this report are interesting, but it is also important to look beyond the numbers to see the people they represent.
These are Jews who were born into a world that wanted to see them killed.
"They endured the atrocities of the Holocaust in their youth and were forced to rebuild an entire life from the ashes of the camps and ghettos that destroyed their families and communities."
Schneider was emphatic: "The data forces us to accept the reality that Holocaust survivors will not be with us forever; in fact, we have already lost most survivors."
This report is the most complete in recent years
, according to the organization.
Founded in 1951, the Claims Conference was a signatory to the so-called Luxembourg Agreement, in which Germany took responsibility for Nazi atrocities and paid reparations.
The signing of the agreement was seen as their first major step back into the community of nations after World War II.
Since then, the German government has paid more than $90 billion, according to the group.
In total six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
At the presentation of the report, this Tuesday in New York, some of the elderly survivors of the Nazi horror were present.
Reha Bennicasa, daughter of Rose Girone, the oldest known living Holocaust survivor at the Claims Conference, spoke there.
“As a survivor and the daughter of a survivor, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to share our testimonies.
"Personally, I am happy that my mother turned 112 and to know that she is the oldest Holocaust survivor," she noted.
Bennicasa filled the auditorium with emotion: "My mother and I survived German and then Japanese oppression. Her strength throughout this horror and in all other facets of her life is amazing. She is a wonderful example to me and, "I hope, for the world. Given the declining population of survivors and the rise of anti-Semitism, we must encourage the world to learn about our collective history so that the Holocaust never happens again."
Source: AFP and Clarín