Holocaust survivors who are in financial distress are getting a $457,500 boost thanks to an allocation from the Azrieli Foundation.
The funds will go to four Canadian organizations that provide services to an estimated 3,000 elderly survivors in communities across the country. Many are in dire financial straits and find it difficult to afford the basic necessities the supplementary funding provides, said Sidney Zoltak, co-president of Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants. Among the items to be funded are dentures, eyeglasses, hearing aids, rent support, medicine, home care and even taxi vouchers to transport survivors to doctors appointments.
The Azrieli Foundation’s funds provide a much-needed supplement to sums already provided through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (known as the Claims Conference), Zoltak said.
The Claims Conference negotiates payments from the government of Germany and other European states, and distributes them to Jewish agencies around the world to provide services and support to elderly survivors, based on their needs.
In Canada, the Claims Conference distributes $23 million to a dozen agencies, including the four that will benefit from the Azrieli Foundation allocation: the Cummings Centre for Seniors in Montreal; Jewish Family & Child of Greater Toronto; Jewish Family Services of Ottawa; and Jewish Family Service Agency of Vancouver.
READ: CLAIMS CONFERENCE INCREASES FUND FOR CANADIAN SURVIVORS
The Claims Conference has negotiated increases from the government of Germany for the period ranging from 2016 to 2018 for survivors around the world, but there are still needs that must be addressed, said Zoltak, who along with Toronto lawyer Keith Landy are members of the Claims Conference board of directors.
“In the last little while, home care has been targeted by the Jewish community. It’s important for the elderly person to remain in their homes as long as they can. For survivors, to move them at an age where they’re frail is very traumatic,” Zoltak said.
Dena Libman, chief operating officer of the Azrieli Foundation, said an article in The CJN two years ago alerted the organization to the needs of low-income survivors. The foundation, known for publishing survivors’ memoirs, collecting witness testimonies and for Holocaust education, decided it would support the Cummings Centre’s efforts to assist survivors in Montreal.
“Our board realized that if it’s an issue in Montreal, then it is an issue elsewhere,” Libman said. That’s why it expanded the program to support other agencies serving Holocaust survivors, she added.
Libman called on other philanthropists to join in supporting survivors. “It’s important to us that people be aware of this need,” she said.
“The Azrieli Foundation has been an immensely valuable partner, working co-operatively with the Claims Conference and contributing to the welfare of Holocaust survivors in their time of need,” Zoltak added.
In other developments, the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) expressed its disappointment with a recent decision by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal that upheld a Polish law that limits the rights of individuals to claim private property in Warsaw confiscated by government bodies during the Holocaust and by the postwar Communist regime.
“Poland is the only country in the European Union that has failed to establish a comprehensive program to address the issue of confiscated Holocaust- or Communist-era private property,” the WJRO said in a news release.
The WJRO, whose Canadian partner is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said, “We are very disappointed that the court upheld an unjust law that ends the rights of many claimants to their property in Warsaw,.
“This decision highlights the need for Poland, at long last, to do what all other countries in the former Soviet bloc have done: establish a national program to provide all Jewish and non-Jewish former owners, and their families, the opportunity to claim restitution or compensation for their property confiscated during the Holocaust or by the Communist authorities. As the last survivors get older, now is the time for Poland to act,” said Gideon Taylor, WJRO chair of operations.
