(Berlin) Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, there are around 245,000 Holocaust survivors alive in more than 90 countries, according to a new demographic study released Tuesday.
According to the Claims Conference, an organization of Jewish organizations, 119,300 of them live in Israel, while 38,400 reside in the United States and 21,900 in France.
“Almost all current survivors were children at the time of Nazi persecution, having survived camps, ghettos, flight and hiding,” the report said, emphasizing that it was also children who had the “chances the thinnest to survive.
With an average age of 86, survivors are “at a time in their lives when their need for care and services increases,” Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, said in a statement, adding that it was “time to redouble our attention to this declining population.”
This “World Demographic Report on Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust” was established by cross-referencing several databases from the compensation and assistance programs for survivors managed by the Claims Conference.
The Claims Conference was created to help survivors receive compensation following the September 1952 agreement between West Germany and Israel.
At the end of this agreement, West Germany agreed to pay more than three billion marks at the time.
By this gesture, the young FRG joined the community of nations after the Second World War, the Shoah and the extermination of six million Jews.
Since then, the German government has spent more than US$90 billion to “repair” the suffering and losses of victims of Nazi persecution, following negotiations led by the Claims Conference.
Among survivors, those who were detained in concentration camps receive ongoing payments, while those who fled the Nazi regime get one-time compensation.