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Assistance to Elderly Survivors Explored at Conference
Since 1995, the Claims Conference has distributed $500 million to social service agencies around the world that assist the neediest, most vulnerable Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. On March 2-3, it gathered together more than 200 social service professionals from those agencies for “Honoring Life: Working Effectively with Holocaust Survivors.”The two-day conference was aimed at helping professionals in their task of assisting Jewish Holocaust survivors. The attendees, from the U.S., Canada, and Israel, coordinate essential services funded by the Claims Conference such as homecare, medical care and equipment, meals on wheels, emergency cash grants, and case management.
Holocaust survivors in later years of life suffer from physical and emotional distress at higher rates than the elderly population as a whole. Prolonged malnutrition under the Nazis may affect their health in old age, triggering osteoporosis and broken bones, heart problems, impaired vision, dental problems, and high blood pressure. There are particularly high rates of dementia and schizophrenia among Jewish victims of Nazism, and many are alone as a result of having lost their entire family during the Shoah.
Claims Conference President Israel Singer spoke of the importance of social service professionals in the lives of survivors who need assistance. “You are the lifeline for these people…We have to find that moment of need and we have to respond to that need. Survivors have a tremendous amount to transmit to us and we in turn have an obligation to them.”
Participants in the conference were able to use this opportunity as a forum for exchanging new ideas and discussing best practices for both small and large agencies. Many professionals providing these services to Nazi victims described feeling isolated from their colleagues and said this conference helped to foster this growing professional community in North America.
Some of the many conference workshops included “Significant Psychological Issues,” "Effective Community Programming- Expanding the Role of the Volunteer," “Long-Term Care Decisionmaking,” and "Tackling the Learning Curve- Effective Ways to Train Staff, Students, and the Community." The conference was co-sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York in coordination with Selfhelp Community Services and the Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies.
“I am so glad that the Claims Conference, in working with all of us in so many different cities, had the vision to see that we could all benefit from meeting and knowing each other,” said Joan Margolis, State Coordinator of Programs for Holocaust Survivors of the Jewish Family Service of Greater Hartford.
While many of the most vulnerable survivors are in or nearing their 80s, there are still thousands of younger victims, particularly child survivors, who are only in their 60s.
“The idea that Holocaust survivors will be gone in 10 to 15 years is just wrong,” said Carla Lessing, founder and vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Hidden Child Foundation. She spent the war years in hiding in Holland.
“For children, separation meant abandonment,” says child survivor Nathan Durst, who also hid in Holland and cofounded AMCHA, the Israeli Center for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation. “They feel they were left alone at a certain age without understanding why, without wanting it.”
Child survivors face their own set of long-term fears and disorders, such as chronic depression, chronic anxiety, psychosomatic disorders, peptic ulcers, and diaphragmatic hernias that could worsen or possibly complicate other conditions as they age.