Holocaust Survivors
A significant current in the population of the State of Israel from its founding.
Holocaust survivors are all those who managed to endure the horrors and devastation of World War II, which began in 1939 and lasted until 1945.
The survivors endured the hell of the Nazis in various ways. They were forced laborers liberated from labor and concentration camps, partisans who fought in the forests, deportees and refugees who wandered from country to country across the continent. After the war ended, they came by ship and plane to the Jewish state, the safest refuge for them, to open a new chapter in their lives.
The generation of Holocaust survivors is slowly disappearing.
At its peak, immediately after the war, it numbered about half a million men, women, and children of all ages, and it was a central pillar in the foundation and very existence of the State of Israel in its current form.
A few thousand of them were enlisted, immediately upon their arrival, into the military organizations that fought the War of Independence, and were killed in the battles. All the others who remained alive were absorbed into the population of the new state, rebuilding their lives, starting families, and moving on—some successfully, others less so.
They lived in cities and Kibbutzim, in villages and Moshavim and in every corner of the State of Israel, and were clerks and managers, laborers and industrialists, accountants and engineers, employees and self-employed, journalists and artists, judges and Knesset members, farmers and civil servants, yeshiva students and rabbis—in every profession and with every title in all walks of life.
They did not flaunt their Holocaust experience or ask for favors—others did that for them. They just wanted to live after the hell they had gone through.
And their lives became a testimony and a symbol—a testimony to the Holocaust and a symbol of revival.
The Holocaust itself is a sacred taboo in Israeli society.
The survivors of the Holocaust are "protected flowers" that are not touched. They are not argued with, laughed at, or disrespected. They have been, and still are, treated specially. Over the years they received financial compensation for the suffering they endured, but the compensation did not restore their families who perished, the property they had accumulated, or the lost years that were taken from them by the Nazis in Europe.
The State of Israel has remembered them since its founding, all year round, and embraces them on one special day. In very close proximity to Independence Day, the state established "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day." On this day, the entire nation stands at attention, bows its head, and remembers the Holocaust and the 6 million who perished. On this day, the survivors are given a platform at every official ceremony and in all media outlets—to tell what they went through, to comfort them as much as possible, and to honor the memory of their families and the families of all those who perished.
Eighty years after World War II ended, the generation is dwindling.
As of 2023, the number of Holocaust survivors is estimated at about 150,000 men and women—almost all of them 80 years old and over, among them new immigrants who arrived at an advanced age from various countries in Europe, to find a final rest among their Jewish brethren in Israel.
The children that the survivors brought into the world are called the "second generation" to the Holocaust survivors. Many of this generation are considered secondary victims of the horrors of the Holocaust. They grew up in the shadow of the traumas, and the scars the parents carried left their mark on them as well.
The children of the third generation are, more or less, free from the traumas, but the information about their grandparents, the survivors, accompanies them throughout their lives. From a young age, they are exposed to information about the war and its horrors—in the education system, in the army, in academia, and in ceremonies on "Holocaust Remembrance Day" and throughout the year in repeated mentions of the Holocaust and its survivors.
Historical bits:
The status of Holocaust survivors, and their place in Israeli society, underwent historical processes until it solidified into what it is: a status of "protected flowers."
It started with their absorption in the country, which was not simple, to say the least.
Although the Jewish establishment in the Hebrew Yishuv made every effort to bring them and received them with open arms, it labeled them with the term "She'erit HaPletah" (The Surviving Remnant), with good intentions, but the labeling did not grant them special rights. On the contrary: here they had to adapt to the reality being created in the new homeland, and to the "veteran" locals—those who had been here since the days of the British Mandate, and had already taken root in the new land.
The locals received them as refugees in need of empathy, nothing more.
From the establishment of the state and for 15 years, the survivors were considered by many to be second-class—inferior people who deserved pity, and who didn't understand what was happening here. They had arrived on ships, alone without families, without property, didn't speak the Hebrew of the "Sabras," and did not participate in weaving the narrative that had been created in the Land of Israel since the beginning of the 20th century—they didn't drain swamps, didn't fight against the British, didn't plant a tree in the homeland's soil, didn't travel its length and breadth. They didn't know the reality that had been created here for a generation.
The encounter with the condescending locals gave rise to derogatory expressions that were etched in infamy forever: there were those who accused them, the survivors and all the victims of the Nazis, as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter." There were those who simply disdained them and called them "Sabonim" (soaps), a nickname whose origin is in stories about pieces of soap that Nazi workshops produced from the remains of the victims' bodies in the gas chambers.
The Holocaust survivors had to justify themselves, tried to explain what happened, to tell about the horrors and describe their intensity, but those who were here and felt like first-class citizens listened with a shake of their heads. The stories sounded illogical, and were considered the overactive imagination of traumatized people. Those who were willing to listen pitied them and returned to fighting their own private war of survival.
The survivors themselves stopped telling their stories, and quietly blended into Israeli society—hiding the number tattooed on their arm, hiding their past from their children, from their neighbors, and from their workplace.
The economic crisis and the austerity measures in the state's first years didn't make it easier for them. The establishment continued to embrace them mostly in words, while they themselves fought another battle in a war of survival that left them in the shadows.
In the early 1950s, the survivors' voices were heard, for a short period.
At that time, Israel signed the "Reparations Agreement" with the new German government, which was established after the Nazis were removed. According to the agreement, the Germans agreed to pay reparations to each and every one of the Holocaust survivors, personally, and in addition—reparations to the State of Israel as the representative of the Jewish victims.
During the formulation of the agreement, many survivors voiced shouts of opposition. Receiving compensation seemed shameful to them, and like an agreement to forgive the Germans for what they had done to them. The opponents went out to stormy demonstrations all over the country and made their voices heard on the radio and in the press—the media of those days.
Despite the opposition—the agreement was signed, and the State of Israel, as the representative of the Jewish people, received generous grants from the Germans.
The money received helped the state get out of the economic crisis, liquidate the transit camps, absorb new immigrants who continued to flow in, and advance a building boom throughout the country.
The generation of survivors returned to the quiet, shaded corner. Despite the feeling of discomfort and the demonstrations, most of them agreed to accept their financial compensation and moved on, putting the past behind them. Those who did not agree to accept—tried to get by on their own, and did not always succeed.
Another full decade would pass until their voices would be heard again.
Menachem Begin speaks to thousands of Holocaust survivors at a demonstration against the Reparations Agreement.Demonstrators carry a sign (in Hebrew) that reads: "We will erase the shame"
In 1962, a turning point occurred.
One of the Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann, was captured and brought to Israel. Here, a public trial was held for him, and he was sentenced to death.
The Eichmann trial lasted eight months and created a tremendous stir in Israel and around the world.
It was a true drama—the defendant sat in a glass booth and in front of him, on the witness stand, rose day after day brands plucked from the fire, who had survived the Nazi hell, and gave testimonies of what exactly had happened there. Behind them stood the State of Israel, which invested many resources to bring the Holocaust to light and serve as a voice for the dead and the survivors. The local media was mobilized and reported to the Israeli public daily on what was happening in the courtroom.
For the first time, Holocaust survivors could emerge from behind the scenes onto a public stage that they were given.
During the trial's proceedings, the witnesses, victims of Eichmann and the Nazis, rose.
Their memory was clear, and it ensured honest testimonies that exposed the horrors in the clearest words possible, with a level of detail and vivid descriptions that no human ear could absorb. A particularly dramatic peak moment was the testimony of the survivor Ka-Tzetnik who fainted on the witness stand, a short time after he defined what took place in the Auschwitz extermination camp as "life on another planet."
Such peak moments, like the very existence of the trial, including the discussions and testimonies, shed a new light on everything that was known in Israel about the Holocaust.
All at once, the spotlights were turned on the survivors who could emerge from the shadows and stand tall—a number tattooed on the arm was no longer a shameful matter that had to be hidden. It was possible to tell their children who their grandparents were and how many uncles and aunts there were and could have been, to be interviewed on the radio on "Holocaust Remembrance Day," and to feel free from guilt and inferiority. The media's coverage of the trial revealed data and statistics that presented the magnitude of the horror in dry numbers. Published pictures became symbols of memory—and all of these changed the collective consciousness in Israel, as well as in the entire world.
After the trial, Israel transitioned to a state of complete acceptance and an understanding that there was a central segment in the population that deserved special treatment.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is set very close to Independence Day, received a national significance, and the taboo on the Holocaust and on the survivors was sealed.
Some of the main organizations and institutions
that deal with Holocaust survivors, like: Yad Vashm, Amcha,
The Center Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel
In the 1980s, another nuance was added to the memory of the Holocaust and its survivors.
The singer Yehuda Poliker released an album called "Efer VeAvak" (Ashes and Dust), which included songs that dealt with his family members—remnants of the Greek Jewish community, with life after the Holocaust, and with the reality of "the second generation."
Some of the songs entered the pantheon of Hebrew song. They were played over and over on the radio and at official ceremonies, and they shed a spotlight on the Holocaust that befell Jews of Sephardic origin. Until then, the Holocaust was perceived in the collective consciousness as an event that dealt with Jews from countries like Hungary or Poland, France or Belgium. Those who belonged in the Israeli consciousness to the "Ashkenazi" population segment.
Poliker's songs expanded the circle of Holocaust survivors and added to it also the Jews of Thessaloniki and Athens. Ladino, the unique language of the Greeks, blended into the memory of the Holocaust along with Yiddish, the language of most of the survivors. The sounds of the bouzouki mingled with the wails of a violin, and the stories of the Thessaloniki ghetto mingled with the stories of the Warsaw ghetto.
In the following decades, the circle was expanded even more, and Jews from countries in North Africa were also added to it, those who suffered from the Nazi occupation. The State of Israel officially recognized the Jews who lived in these countries as entitled to support and financial benefits.
Ashes and Dust - Yehuda Poliker's album. To listen, click on the image or the YouTube link here
This is part of "The Israeli Story 1948-2025" project
What is The Israeli Story ?
A curated selection of Israeli snapshots, those that were and still are with us. Each one deserves an updated definition with a few words of explanation along with a tiny bit of history. Just a little – and all of them together go into the virtual Israeli Story that will remain online for future generations. You can see what's included in it by clicking on the icon below.
