More than 25 percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel live below the poverty line, a lobby said. According to figures released this week by the Holocaust Survivors’ Welfare Fund, around 80,000 of 280,000 Holocaust survivors get by on a few hundred dollars a month, with limited access to health care. Israel’s Finance Ministry said it allocates $330 million for survivors, who generally get more in state benefits than other senior citizens. Part of the problem is that many survivors are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and do not get reparation payments from abroad like their counterparts from Western Europe.
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