Amcha: We Help People
Lea and her family fled from their native Yugoslavia during the Holocaust when she was 8, and they survived 2 years hiding in Albania, with no papers, no income, barely any food, no opportunity to go outside. She lived in her imagination. The family moved to Israel when she was 13, but as she grew up, she lacked self-confidence, cried easily, angered easily, slept badly. Her family doctor sent her to Amcha.
After 20 years of psychotherapy, she wrote to her therapist: “I was like a smelly, rotten onion; I was scared to do anything, sure I would fail. Slowly, I started to feel better, because there was someone who listened and understood me. I don’t know how to thank you or Amcha, for all the activities and trips; you have given me back my childhood.”
Pnina survived 4 years in Transnistria, to where she and her family were expelled from their home by the Romanian authorities in 1941 when she was 9. They slept on the bare ground of a stable in cold as low as -40; 9 people shared 1 blanket. They often went days on end without food. She moved to Israel in 1947 and never talked of her experiences until she was 80. Only after 7 years of psychotherapy at Amcha did she understand how much energy she was wasting on keeping the blackness of her childhood suppressed. “I felt like a prisoner released from a life sentence. Today, Amcha is my second home.”
Amcha’s Care for Holocaust Survivors in Numbers
- 17 branches from Nahariya in the north to Beersheva, Ashkelon and Sderot in the south care for 4,000 Holocaust survivors
- 13 psychosocial clubs regularly attended by 1,500 survivors
- 600 psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, and expressive arts therapists who provide face to face and distance therapy sessions one on one and in groups
- Hundreds of volunteers who visit survivors in their homes
- Amcha’s role in Holocaust education: On a regular basis, some 1,200 survivors meet with 9,500 young members of Israeli society. Larger numbers are impacted by Holocaust commemoration events
Second Generation in Numbers
- 4 social clubs, each with some 100 members
- Subsidized psychosocial support to 250-300
Amcha’s Care for Other Members of Israeli Society who Need Psychotherapy in Numbers
- Amcha’s therapists provide psychotherapy to 5,500
- Nearly 3,000 people affected by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and the ensuing war were treated by Amcha therapists during the first year after the attack
My volunteer’s visit “is my favorite time of the week, I wait for it, get dressed up, even put on makeup. I do not go out much these days, so her visit is like an outing, an event. It makes me happy. I look forward to it and think about what we will do, what we will talk about. We have a good time together no matter what we do. Just being together is good for my soul.”
“My volunteer is my sun. When she comes to me, she lights up my whole house. She brightens up my day, my week. She is wonderful.”
Eitan (not his real name) spent months in combat reserve duty in Gaza after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. When he returned home, troubled by the damage to children’s lives and wellbeing that he witnessed there, he found he had no patience for his own children, questioned his role as a father, and could not cope with his return to civilian life. Amcha has helped him reframe his experiences and start functioning normatively again.
Inbal (not her real name) and her husband, parents of 3 children aged under 10, survived the Hamas attack at the Nova party. Since then, while her husband functions, but as an automaton, Inbal has been unable to return to work, barely functions as a mother, often cannot even make an appointment for her next treatment at an Amcha clinic. With intense and extended psychotherapy, within a year, she should be able to overcome her PTSD.