60 Years After Liberation Survivors Grateful for Their Long Lives, but Struggle with Poverty and Mem

Simon Unger lived every day at Auschwitz thinking it’d be his last. “It was day to day. If you die today or tomorrow, you knew you were going to die because that’s what Auschwitz was,” he said.

But in fact, Unger not only survived the war but has lived 60 years since its end.

In 1995, 50 years after being liberated from what he calls a “living hell,” he gathered nearly 80 friends to mark a “celebration of life.”

“I am alive,” the 81-year-old said Sunday in a telephone interview with JTA from his home in Florida. “When I lived to the 40th” anniversary, “I didn’t think I’d see the 50th. You never think you’ll see it, but you live with hope.”

Many Holocaust survivors liberated in 1945 are grateful that they have lived this long, but the accomplishment is mixed with anxiety as they worry that their experiences might be forgotten.

At last count, there were 122,000 Holocaust survivors living in the United States, according to the United Jewish Communities’ National Population Survey 2000-01.

The survey paints a picture of the survivor population in America: As a general rule, survivors’ median age is higher and they are frailer and in greater need of financial or social assistance than other elderly Jews, it found.

In a 20-page report, “Nazi Victims Residing in the United States,” the NJPS reports that non-survivors are more than twice as likely as survivors to be working; 23 percent of survivors are disabled and unable to work compared with 5 percent of non-survivors; and survivors are five times more likely to live in poverty than non-survivors, with 25 percent of them falling under the federal poverty benchmark.

But many survivors, especially those who came to the United States in the years immediately following World War II, have done well financially.

“We have actually risen from ashes and made lives for ourselves. We pulled ourselves up, educated our children and raised families,” survivor Joe Sachs said.

David Mermelstein, 76, a survivor and president of the Coalition of Holocaust Survivors in South Florida, explained that it wasn’t always this way.

But “as age started to catch up, there were a lot of older people who got sick and the little money they had was used up,” he said.

He said that five years ago, 79 survivors were on a waiting list for aid in the South Florida area and 350 others received aid, out of a population of about 3,000. “A lot of them don’t want to ask for help,” he added.

There’s also the ongoing psychological pain.

Mermelstein, who was 11 when the war started and 15 when he was sent to Auschwitz, said a survivor can never shed the Holocaust’s shadow.

“You cannot forget because when it comes to a holiday,” there is always somebody missing, he said.

Lorraine Blass, the NJPS project manager, says the demographic data provides social service groups with useful information.

“It had been coming to our attention, to the federation system’s attention, that elements of this group were particularly needy,” she said.

In addition to NJPS data, a special report in a UJA-Federation of New York study, The Jewish Community Study of New York: 2002, analyzes a group of Holocaust survivors in the New York area, which is estimated to be a community of about 55,000.

This data assists groups that help survivors, including the Claims Conference, in allocating restitution funds.

“I think over the last few years, studies in the United States and in other places in the world have helped in the planning and allocation of resources to help the needy survivors. Knowledge is a critical element in trying to deal with problems in a thoughtful way,” said Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the Claims Conference.

In part because of its need for data, the Claims Conference, with other groups, helped fund and worked closely in crafting the questions asked of Nazi victims in both studies.

In the NJPS report, victims were generally classified as having lived under Nazi control or having been forced to flee. Survivors also were split into two groups: victims who arrived in the Unites States prior to 1965 and those who arrived after, primarily from the former Soviet Union.

Among the later immigrants, the post-1965 group was found to be much worse off, a fact corroborated by the UJA study.

Over half of the post-65 group reported living below poverty, compared to 1 percent of pre-1965 victims, according to the NJPS report.

According to UJA data, Nazi victims in Russian-speaking households are “much more likely” to be poor than Nazi victims in non-Russian-speaking households.

In general, UJA also reported that one in four Nazi victims in the New York area lives alone; the median age of victims living alone is 76.

But statistical surveys are unable to capture a final changing aspect of survivors in the 21st century: survivors’ increased need to leave behind a legacy.

“I think the focus of survivors after liberation was to start a new family immediately. Fifteen, 20 years ago they were working, raising families. Now the focus as they retire is the grandchildren who they are telling their story to because they realize time is of the essence,” said Avi Mizrachi, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Committee.

Unger recently brought his children to Poland to show them his home and to visit the mass grave where he thinks his parents are buried.

“It was hard,” he said, choking back tears. But he said he wanted to close a chapter on his life there.

It wasn’t until Sachs’ granddaughter asked him to speak to her Holocaust class in college that he decided to volunteer to help needy Holocaust survivors and to speak about his Holocaust experience to student groups.

“As I left and said goodbye to her that day, I cried,” he said. After he returned to Florida, he “offered myself to do any kind of work as a volunteer,” he added. “I am amply rewarded in all the work I do in seeing that the history of the Holocaust gets conveyed.”