President Isaac Herzog at Yad Vashem: Photo by Kobi Gideon (GPO)
As of Yom Hashoa 2023, there are 147,199 Holocaust survivors and victims of anti-Semitic harassment during the Holocaust currently living in Israel, including 462 who are over the age of 100. This is according to data released by Israel’s Authority for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors on the eve of Israel’s Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Memorial Day – which began at sundown Monday night with a national ceremony at Yad Vashem.
About 10% of the survivors immigrated to Israel before the end of 1948, about 70,000 (47%) immigrated by the end of the 1950s and about 52,000 (44%) immigrated to Israel from 1989 on, during the great wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union.
They have an average age of 85.8. The oldest is a 118-year-old born in Romania. The youngest among them are 76 years old, born in 1946 (those who were conceived at the end of the war and are also recognized by law). 462 survivors celebrated their 100th birthday last year. 21% of them, approximately 31,000, passed the age of 90, and 1,161 passed the age of 100. 60% of all Holocaust survivors in Israel are women, approximately 89,000, whose average age is slightly higher at 85.8.
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In the past year, grants and rewards in the amount of over NIS 5.6 billion ($1.55 billion) were awarded by the Authority for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors. And 521 new immigrants from the war in Ukraine were recognized as survivors.
Yopn HaShoah takes place on the Hebrew date on which the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – where the Jews fought back against the German Army – came to an end. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the uprising.
Every year, Israel’s political and religious leaders gather at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem for ceremonies marking the start of the day. Places of entertainment throughout Israel were closed Monday night and Tuesday morning a siren will sound nationwide during which time people will stand for one minute of silence.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog opened the ceremonies at Yad Vashem with a speech in which he made mention of Israel’s current political turmoil, connecting them to the Holocaust.
“This Remembrance Day is like no other,” he said. “This year, feelings are rough and shoulders are hunched as if to attest to the weight of the discord bearing down on us. I appeal to you, citizens of Israel, with a simple prayer: let us leave these sacred days, which begin tonight and end on Independence Day, above all dispute; let us all come together, as always, in partnership, in grief, in remembrance.”
“Even in the grips of ferocious disagreements about fate, about destiny, about faith, about values,” added Herzog, “we must be careful to avoid any comparisons, any equivalences—not with the Holocaust, and not with the Nazis. At the high point of this sacred day, it seems that even the obvious must be stated: for the Nazi monster, opinions within our nation made not the slightest difference. None of the ideologies, beliefs, or ways of life, none of the differences or varieties within our people, bore any meaning.”
