Feature: Israeli holocaust survivors plagued by poverty

"I only have a few more years left to live. I want to live with dignity and not have to shove newspapers into the edges of the windows in the winter so I won't get cold because I can't heat my apartment," Hadasa Hershkovich, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, told reporters earlier this week.

Hershkovich, who came to Israel from Romania in the 1950s after her family was persecuted by the Nazis, is not the only one stuck in this predicament.

As of 2015, there are 189,000 holocaust survivors living in Israel, out of which 45,000 (24 percent) live below the poverty line (an income of about 600 U.S. dollars per month), according to a report published by the Foundation of the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel days before Thursday's Holocaust Memorial Day.

The survey conducted by the foundation also found that 30 percent of the survivors had to refrain from buying food due to economic hardships and a quarter had to forego medical treatment for the same reason. Like Hadasa, 27 percent of the survivors could not heat their homes during the winter months.

"This report attests more than anything to the urgent need to give a proper response to the needs of those survivors," Roni Kalinski, chairperson of the foundation, said at a press conference in which the report was presented in Tel Aviv. "This matter must be placed at the top of the state's agenda."

Since the end of World War II and up until the 1960s, more than half a million European Jews came to Israel, most of whom are holocaust survivors and their offspring.

Israel signed a compensation agreement with Germany in 1952. Under the agreement, Germany gave Israel about 3 million marks (the German currency then) between 1953 and 1965 as compensation for the "suffering and the material damage caused to Jews during the holocaust."

Under a 1957 Israeli law, those who immigrated to Israel after 1953 are not considered Holocaust survivors and are not entitled to survivors' compensation from the state.

Many have criticized the law, which discriminates between survivors who moved to Israel before and after 1953. Germany does not pay survivors who came to Israel after 1953 and they must survive on a modest pension from social security of only a few thousand Israeli shekels a month.

"Some of the survivors only get 3,000 shekels (758 dollars) to live on a month. That's a very a low sum, especially considering the rising costs of living in Israel," Kalinski.

Throughout the past decades, state comptrollers and formal - as well as informal - committees have decried the handling of the holocaust survivors by the state.

A 2007 state comptroller's report found many shortcomings in the state's treatment of the survivors. It found many of the survivors are not getting pensions they deserve due to a lack of a unified definition of who is a holocaust survivor - those who were in the camps and ghettos or anyone who had to flee, suffer and hide during World War II?

In January 2015, the Ha'aretz daily wrote of a report handed to the Prime Minister's Office, issued by a committee with members from different governmental ministries, charging that throughout its history Israel "did not do enough" to take care of its survivors in the past decades.

It marked the main failings of the state including complicated bureaucracy of various government ministries and organizations in charge of dealing with the survivors.

Furthermore, the report, which was not widely publicized in Israeli media outlets, said that out of nearly 200,000 survivors, there is reliable information about only half of them. It also charged that amid difficulties of accessibility and communication, many survivors are finding it difficult to receive the services they deserve.

The report charged a unified body should be established with responsibility over the holocaust survivors, which would coordinate the handling of the survivors and would create an all-encompassing database of the survivors living in Israel.

"Many holocaust survivors don't trust the establishment because their needs are not adequately met," the report said. "It should not be avoided that the state of Israel did not manage to give the survivors the welfare, nursing, handling and listening what they deserve. There won't be another chance, making this Israel's true test."

In June 2014, then Finance Minister Yair Lapid introduced a plan, which was approved by the Knesset, aimed at assisting holocaust survivors, at the approximate sum of a billion shekels a year. Some charge the plan marked a real change in the treatment of holocaust survivors in Israel.

"This plan repaired an historic injustice that found some holocaust survivors more eligible for compensation than others," Orly Vilnnai, a welfare journalist who wrote extensively about holocaust survivors, told Xinhua on Tuesday.

"Until then, dry criteria like birth date and disability percentages decided who would get more and who would get less. The plan introduced by Lapid compares between the pensions of those who came to Israel before 1953 and after, allowing all to receive between 2,200 (556 dollars) and 8,000 shekels (2,021 dollars) a month," she added.

She also explained that those who were persecuted by the Nazis but did not stay in camps or ghettos would also get a benefit of 7,600 shekels (1,920 dollars) a year.

"We need to give credit when credit is due," Vilnai said. "Up until now, the treatment of survivors was appalling. However, things have started to change. Many who were not recognized as holocaust survivors are now recognized as such."

Is the plan too late? According to the foundation's report from this week, 14,000 survivors died in the past year, with an average of 40 survivors dying daily.

In addition, there are still many elderly in Israel who are waiting to be recognized as holocaust survivors.

An association advocating for elderly rights appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court on Monday against the Finance Ministry, which does not include in its new plan 70,000 people who came to Israel from former Soviet Union states in the 1990s. Those people worked in forced work camps, hid in homes amid the Nazi prosecution and thousands of them are still not eligible for a monthly pension from the state.

"There were some important steps taken in the past year to improve the state of many survivors, but that's still not enough," the Ken La'zaken (yes to the elderly) organization said in its appeal.

"Clerks at the Finance Ministry only defined those who survived the ghettos and the camps as holocaust survivors in order to save money to the state," the appeal filed to the court stated. Endit