Posted on 01/26/22
| News Source: i24
Average age of survivors of Nazi genocide during World War II is 85 years old today
Israel is home to 165,800 Holocaust survivors, 90 percent of whom are over 80 years old, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry.
The data was published prior to the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be commemorated on Thursday — the date that the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
The average age of Holocaust survivors is 85, with 19 percent of them, or about 31,000 people, over the age of 90. More than 950 are over 100 years old.
Figures also show that 60 percent of survivors are women — around 105,000, with an average age of 85.4.
In addition, 64 percent of the survivors are from Europe, of which 59,900 are from the former Soviet Union. A total of 19,100 were born in Romania, 8,900 in Poland, 4,500 in Bulgaria, 2,400 in Hungary and 2,300 in Germany.
The Nazi Holocaust also reached Asia and North Africa, with 36 percent of survivors from outside of Europe. Among them, 30,600 were from Morocco and Algeria and suffered from antisemitism and various restrictions under the French "Vichy regime."
In addition, 18,000 survivors are from Baghdad and 11,000 are from Tunisia and Libya — they suffered racial laws and were sent to concentration and labor camps.
A total of 5 percent of survivors immigrated to Israel even before the establishment of the state; 11 percent of the survivors came to Israel at the end of 1948, about 80,500 people (48 percent) immigrated in the late 1950s and more than a third (35 percent) in 1989.
In 2021, 98 Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel.