Holocaust survivors in Israel, 2024

Is it appropriate to say and write “Holocaust nietzolim” or “Holocaust survivors”?

In the last generation, we have witnessed a significant debate originating from the demand to prefer the term “survivors”. It’s entirely clear that this is a correct term, although there’s no shame or error in the older term “nietzolim”. This article uses the more veteran term also because it’s the language of state laws (such as the Holocaust Survivors Benefits Law, 2007). The criticism of the term “nietzolim” is that it implies as if they didn’t experience the Holocaust at all. Jews who lived outside the Holocaust countries, or were born after it, are, supposedly, the true survivors. But the original meaning of the term in relation to the Holocaust is different: It doesn’t refer to Jews who didn’t experience it, but specifically to those who were forced to experience it – but survived death. In other contexts too, we say that when a house burns down, God forbid, and a journalist announces that he will interview one of the survivors, his intent understood by the audience isn’t someone who wasn’t in the house at that time, but specifically someone who was there during the fire and survived death. In any case, every person is entitled to use the term close to their heart.

How many Holocaust survivors live in Israel at the time of writing these lines? According to official publications of the Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority, it’s less than 150,000 women and men. Unfortunately, about 40 of these dear people pass away every day, and new numbers are expected to be published every year.

In 1952, the World Jewish Congress, as representative of the entire Jewish people, and the German government signed an agreement regarding reparations that Germany would transfer to survivors worldwide. As part of Israel’s share in these agreements, Israel and Germany determined that survivors claiming that their physical or mental health was harmed by the Nazis and their collaborators would not be entitled to claim reparations in this context from Germany if they immigrated to Israel after 1953. The Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority is the official address for inquiries from immigrants after this date, and the Amcha association is the main “executing contractor” of the State of Israel to assist survivors who need mental and social support.

We, the Israeli public and the state, made three grave mistakes regarding Holocaust survivors, especially those living in Israel. This is in addition to the practical difficulties involved in the survivors’ economic rights towards the state and the realization of these rights.

The first mistake was that in the eyes of a large part of the Jewish public in Israel, and the education system within it, the victims and survivors worthy of appreciation were only those who fought with weapons against the Nazis. These fighters defended the national honor of the Jewish people and set an example for IDF soldiers. In the eyes of that Israeli public (except for the survivors themselves), it was not enough that the rest of the Jews who experienced the Holocaust were not found worthy of appreciation, but it was right to condemn them: supposedly they were exilic, weak in spirit and cowardly, and as a result did not fulfill their national duty to wage an armed struggle. This condemnation applied to millions of Jews who lived under Nazi rule and their helpers, except for a few thousand fighters in all Holocaust countries.

Only after decades, and after the Yom Kippur War that created a fear of annihilation in us, did we begin to recognize that the Jews in the Holocaust could not have acted differently than they did: they fled from place to place and struggled in a thousand and one ways to survive, protected their families, helped friends, conducted private or public negotiations with Nazis, maintained cultural life and more.

Among the dilemmas that Jews faced: Should they stay or flee? Should they stick with the family elders – or allow the young to try to survive separately? Should the family primarily support the young children, or do the older ones have a better chance of survival? Should Jewish public figures refuse to hand over any Jew to the Nazis, and thus, perhaps, hasten the punishment and extermination of the entire community, or should they agree to hand over a few to try and save the many? There are no clear answers to these questions, even after three generations. Presumably, if we were there, we would have acted similarly to our mothers and fathers. Armed resistance was impossible for the vast majority of Jews, and when it was possible – it endangered the lives of the entire community and could have hastened its death. We, who were not there, should not harshly judge those who were. Furthermore, it’s worth reconsidering whether every person, or every Jew, in difficult conditions, has the duty to take up arms at any cost for national honor, even when the weapons cannot save the lives of those wielding them, and certainly not the lives of the entire community.

If we are to point to a group of Jews in those days whose moral contribution was particularly great (in addition to the brave fighters), it would be those who worked to save many under almost impossible conditions and at additional risk; a kind of Jewish Righteous Among the Nations. It’s time to also highlight the actions of thousands who worked to save others in conditions that seemingly made it impossible.

The second mistake we made was the late recognition of various groups of survivors from Europe, most of whom passed away before state laws addressed them as well. It took us decades before the prisoners in forced labor battalions from Hungary received this recognition, and the same for Jews who lived in “open ghettos” in Romania. The historical knowledge that allowed this late recognition was already available to us a full generation earlier! The legal and public recognition of survivors who immigrated to Israel from the Commonwealth of Independent States was also problematic. Some lived under Nazi rule and their collaborators in Eastern European countries, and there’s no doubt about them being survivors. Others fled eastward from Poland and “managed” to live under Nazi rule itself for only a few weeks. On the other hand, we must also consider the fact that they fled for their lives while leaving behind their family members and property.

The third mistake is also related to late recognition, although this delay has special implications: As an immigrant country, and for other reasons, the tension between different ethnic groups is one of the characteristics of Jewish society in Israel. Seemingly, the memory of the Holocaust is an aggravating factor for this tension, as European Jews received reparations from Germany and Israel, while Mizrahi Jews did not receive the same.

The truth is much more complex, and only in the last generation have we seen its full practical expression: Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews lived in Europe at that time. The Sephardic community in Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and other countries was a minority among the Jewish people in Europe, but the proportion of those who perished from it was higher than among the Ashkenazi communities.

Moreover, the Nazis believed in their duty to murder the entire Jewish people, and paid no attention to the differences between Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern Jews. The communities in Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Yemen were threatened by hostile local regimes that had allied with the Nazis.

The communities in Syria and Lebanon were discriminated against according to French racial laws based on Nazi Nuremberg laws.

The discrimination by the French authorities with German involvement, as it occurred in Morocco and Algeria, was even more severe, and Jews from these countries who were in France were sent to death camps in Poland.

The Jews of Tunisia suffered similarly at the hands of the French, and also lived under actual Nazi rule for nearly half a year.

The “Farhud”, the riots against Baghdad’s Jews, also stemmed from the spread of anti-Semitic propaganda by the German embassy and from the trend of total extermination of the Jewish community in this country that was formed by the local government.

A large part of Libya’s Jews were imprisoned in concentration and labor camps in that country, and hundreds of them were deported to the central camps in Europe.

The only reason for the relatively low proportion of murdered Jews in Islamic countries was the Nazis’ quick defeat in this part of the world. Jews in these countries lived under hostile rule, suffered persecution, and some were imprisoned in camps, and even murdered. Many years passed before the education system told their story and before they received reparations from Germany and Israel for their difficult past. This shared fate of large and small Jewish communities, European, Asian and North African, could have served as a unifying factor if we had addressed it seriously in due time.

Holocaust researchers and those in charge of this group’s rights often divide the survivor population into 3 groups:

1. Survivors who experienced imprisonment in a ghetto or camp
2. Survivors who experienced hiding under hostile rule in a forest, basement, or attic
3. Survivors who experienced refuge when fleeing from the hostile area to another place during the Holocaust.

Often, Jews then dealt with different experiences of several types.

About half a million Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel in the years close to the end of the war and the establishment of the state. They settled in cities, established agricultural settlements, integrated into society and made an enormous contribution to the state and society in all areas of life: they integrated into the security system, the education system, science, culture, and media.

It’s difficult to describe the country and its achievements without the part played by the survivors. The Ministry of Defense published data regarding the role of Holocaust survivors in the War of Independence: Contrary to any reasonable expectation, the proportion of survivors was higher than that of native-born Israelis in the IDF in general, in combat units, among recipients of medals of excellence, and among those who fell in battle.

The first state event that exposed a Holocaust episode was the Kastner trial (formally – the Gruenwald trial). In the eyes of a large part of the public, the trial centered not on the suffering of Jews, but on the question of betrayal by some Jews of other Jews. Israel Kastner, who negotiated with the Nazis for rescue, was seen by many as a traitor. Even the mostly exonerating verdict of the Supreme Court, given in 1958, did not change this perception.

Three years later, the Eichmann trial was held in Jerusalem, and finally many survivors took the witness stand and shared their stories. It’s unfortunate that this trial did not give expression to Jewish rescuers or to the fate of North African Jews.

Over the years, especially from the 1980s onwards, psychological research developed in Israel and the rest of the world regarding the impact of the Holocaust on its survivors. This research also led to methods of psychological treatment. Generally, survivors rebuilt their lives with tremendous success, but the difficult memories did not leave them. In 1987, against this background, the AMCHA association was established, supporting survivors in 3 ways:

1. Psychological treatment
2. Social-rehabilitative clubs
3. Home visits by volunteers

AMCHA also supports many of the second generation, the daughters and sons of survivors, who are influenced by their parents’ memories in their own way. It can be assumed that this influence is also present in the lives of even younger generations.

In the final years of the survivors’ lives, we are increasingly raising the duty and opportunity to learn from their experience and perspective, to pass on their legacy to future generations. Among the survivors, there is no consensus regarding the moral lessons that should be learned from that period, and interpretation is our task, the “students”. We offer here the main messages that can, in our opinion, be derived from personal and national memory:

1. The duty of the Jewish people to defend itself in its sovereign state against any attempt to harm it
2. The obligation to respect human beings regardless of religion, race, and gender
3. The ability of human beings to cope with seemingly insurmountable difficulties, to rehabilitate their lives, and to be an example to us all