In 2024, there are still 245,000 Holocaust survivors alive. This was stated in a new report from the Conference on Material Claims of Jews against Germany (Claims Conference), a group that honors and publishes information about those who lived through one of the most tragic episodes of the Second World War.
According to the Claims Conference, these 245,000 Jewish survivors are spread across 90 countries around the world, but most of them live in Israel. 49% of these survivors are there, nearly half. In the United States, there are 16%, many of them on the East Coast and especially in New York. The Claims Conference did an exclusive study on the demographics of its survivors living there.
The dossier focuses on the definition of survivor, which includes not only those who spent time at the concentration camps but also those who were persecuted or displaced. This includes Jews in North Africa. They were born between 1912 and 1943.
The report details the countries of origin of the survivors. A good portion of them, 47%, were born in the countries that made up the Soviet Union. The rest is divided between countries in Eastern Europe, 22%, North Africa, 21%, and the last 10% were born in Western Europe.
The vast majority of survivors are women, almost twice as many as men, 61% compared to 39%. The average age of living survivors in 2024 is high, 86 years. The youngest person included in the study is 77 years old, while the oldest people are over 100 years old. This means that 75% of these individuals were between 3 and 12 years old in 1945 when the horror of the Holocaust ended.
The age of the survivors is an important detail for the report and the Claims Conference. This association, created in 1951, has been representing Jewish victims of the Holocaust to negotiate reparations and compensation with the German state that was formed after Nazi Germany was reformed. The Claims Conference points out that 40% of survivors will receive some type of social pension in 2024, while the other 60% are eligible for some type of annual aid.
Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, told the Jerusalem Post that the data "clearly indicates that most survivors are at a period of life in which their need for care and services is growing. Now is the time to double down on our attention on this waning population. "Now is when they need us the most."
