 ‘We Built The Country And The Country Forgot Us’
Holocaust survivors, many of them indigent, and their advocates are outraged by Israel’s financial neglect of them. Joshua Mitnick - Israel Correspondent at The Jewish Week
 Jerusalem — Walking with a slight limp, Jenya Rozenshtein ambles around an apartment decorated with watercolor paintings that are dark tableaus overlaid with wild streaks of bold color.
They are a testament to a life marred from a childhood spent in a Nazi ghetto in the Ukraine, and bear titles like “Infinite Hell” and “Paradise Lost” to match.
But Rozenshtein says her hardship is not over. Without the balance to navigate the stairwell of her third-floor flat alone she is a virtual shut-in. And with monthly social security checks of approximately $480 from Israel and $370 from the German government, she often goes hungry while eating burnt toast dipped in tea.
“I survived the Nazis on less. In my world I am alone,” says the otherwise feisty 72-year-old. “I have to survive. I have no shoulder to cry on.”
This week the plight of Rozenshtein and tens of thousands of other elderly struggling Holocaust survivors in Israel came into sharp relief as outrage over a recent aid offer by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of $20 a month per survivor drew thousands of demonstrators to a march outside his office.
It was one of the largest protests ever on behalf of Holocaust survivors and leveraged their unique moral authority among the Israeli public to shame the government into revising its offer of support.
Protesters wore the yellow Star of David used by the Nazis to identify Jews in wartime Europe, and carried signs asking, “We’ve already honored the dead. Why don’t we respect the living?”
Though Israel was founded as a refuge for Holocaust victims, tens of thousands of impoverished survivors are languishing without adequate welfare or medical support.
But Tom Segev, the author of “The Seventh Million,” about Israel and the Holocaust, said the controversy is about more than just money. The outrage at the government reflects a historic clash between the worldview of the Israeli Sabra establishment and the survivors.
That’s something of an irony given the government programs to memorialize the six million Jews who died under the Nazis during World War II, and the subsidies to send high school kids to visit the concentration camps in Poland.
“The Holocaust has become a very central part of Israeli identity. With Holocaust survivors we still have a problem,” said Segev, who cited surveys that said eight in 10 Israeli teens identify with Holocaust survivors and consider themselves to be like them in some way.
“These people symbolize weakness. The worst defeat of the Jewish people in history. This is a country that lives from victory to victory. We don’t know how to relate to them. Although we learn to identify with them, we don’t really know what to do with this person with a blue number on their arm.”
Olmert tried to fend off the storm by arguing that he was the first prime minister to try to address the problem. He attacked some of the rally organizers today as having political motives. “This is a sensitive and explosive issue,” he said. “Exaggerating the situation is inappropriate.”
The rally, which included Holocaust survivors, second-generation survivors and high school students from left-wing youth movements, dredged up decades-old questions such as whether or not Jews in Palestine during the war did enough to stop the genocide, and who has the right to speak on survivors’ behalf today.
“The government of Israel denies the Holocaust,” said Yosef Charni, an 82-year survivor of the Treblinka concentration camp who wore a yellow Star of David as well as a striped shirt reminiscent of a prisoner’s uniform at the demonstration. “It’s the marking of a Jew. Yuden. The government got billions of dollars in reparations but they don’t care about us.”
As of 2002, there were 279,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel, or about 40 percent of the country’s senior citizens, according to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors.
Duby Arbel, the director general of the foundation, agreed that the problem is rooted in the awkward relationship between native Israelis and the survivors, who were accused of going “like sheep to the slaughter.” It’s also a function of a compensation system in Israel and abroad that often denies survivors benefits because of bureaucratic rules.
“It’s completely unjust, “ he said. “The various compensation programs at the end of the day leave them without answers to their questions.”
Several months ago, a back injury from a fall left Rozenshtein immobilized and without any assistance in her Tel Aviv apartment. She described the questioning by national insurance case workers as demeaning.
“I thought I was back to the days of the Gestapo,” she said. “It was so insulting.”
At age 6 in the Mogilov ghetto, Rozenshtein witnessed the murder of her infant sister, a grandmother and several cousins, and was herself shot in the knee. The trauma left her mute until the age of 11. Ever since, she’s needed counseling.
A widow of 17 years, she says that her husband’s pension funds and money from an apartment sale were used to finance a heart operation for her husband. Facing an eviction proceeding by a landlord who has leased her the apartment for 46 years under a virtual ownership scheme, she’s had to spend $2,000 for lawyers’ fees.
“I don’t want millions; I only want basic things,” she said. Israel’s government “doesn’t have a heart. We are strangers. We built the country, and the country forgot us.”
Since its establishment, Israel’s government has claimed to speak as an heir to those who perished in the Holocaust, and in the 1950s concluded a deal with the Germans on a reparation program that led to more than $80 billion in payouts over the years. Survivor groups charge that the reparation money is being used by the government on infrastructure rather than individuals.
The government sponsors a myriad of programs to memorialize the six million Jews who died under the Nazis during World War II, instituted a Holocaust memorial day, and has helped send droves of high school kids to visit the concentration camps in Poland.
But until recently, few Israelis were aware of the fact that so many were living in economic and medical distress after being neglected by successive Israeli governments.
“This is tearing at the core of the Israeli society which is about unifying around the Holocaust survivors,” said Roni Lottner, a 41-year-old school principal and a grandson of Holocaust victims. “It’s a shame for the government to offer survivors such a small amount. Israelis are embarrassed by a prime minister who smokes cigars that are more expensive.”
The sentiment was shared by young people at the rally. “It’s a disgrace that the Holocaust survivors have been thrown into the street,” said Noa Leibel, 23, who drove an hour to the protest. “They’re not profitable enough for the government to invest in.”
Following the march there were reports that government officials were working out a more generous deal. But it hasn’t abated criticism of Olmert. At the protest, one parliament member acknowledged the neglect of successive Israeli governments on the issue.
“A state cannot be called a Jewish state if this is the way it treats its survivors,” said  Rabbi Michael Melchior, a Knesset member at the protest. “We can’t compensate, but we can help soothe them.”
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