Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, about 245,000 Jewish survivors are still living across more than 90 countries, a new report revealed Tuesday.
Nearly half of them, or 49%, are living in Israel; 18% are in Western Europe, 16% in the United States, and 12% in countries of the former Soviet Union, according to a study by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.
Before the publication of the demographic report, there were only vague estimates about how many Holocaust survivors are still alive.
Their numbers are quickly dwindling, as most are very old and often of frail health, with a median age of 86. Twenty percent of survivors are older than 90, and more women (61%) than men (39%) are still alive.
Oh hi! Mine was also in Dachau. Died years ago, though. You’re right they’re often forgotten.
She was also a ‘partizan’. Although in her case, she was a teenaged girl who according to her was handed a pamphlet then arrested as she walked around the corner reading it. Given we’re talking about the nazis and nazi collaborators, I doubt entrapment is the worst of the crimes, so seems plausible.
The thing with Dachau, and AFAIK other concentration camps, is that they weren’t actually one concentration camp but an entire complex. Each Konzentrationslager comprised a Stammlager (the main camp), Aussenlager(outside camp), Nebenlager(subcamp), and Arbeitslager(work camp).
So it’s likely that like my grandma, yours will have been sent to a subcamp, after being sorted in Dachau itself. That’s one of the reasons there’s less information about them. The ‘main attraction’ is so horrible, we forgot about all the subcamps where ‘only’ half of the prisoners died. She was probably the right age to do hard labour. Mine was almost certainly experimented on. Obviously she didn’t talk about it much, there was that time grandma tried to jump out of the car when we tried to take her to the hospital, ah childhood memories.
Covid was a bit weird though. Everyone was stockpiling, and it reminded me of my grandma showing me her secret stash of sunlight soap in the upstairs cupboard. As a kid, it seemed innocent, but in retrospect it was pretty obvious she was always prepared for the worst to happen again.
It’s interesting how trauma goes through the generations. Probably also explains some of the health issues we have as a family, given we now know that the children of holocaust survivors inherited epigenetic damage. Trauma’s basically passed on through the children’s genes.
Interesting how this has affected my view of the world, too.
Sorry, this was an overly long comment. I don’t usually get to talk about this at dinner parties. It’s a bit much and unrelateable for most people.
Thank you, that was fascinating. Especially the part about how trauma goes through generations.