Buchenwald survivors arrive in Haifa

Over 200,000 Holocaust survivors were living in Israel according to an Israel Central Bureau of Statistics report at the end of last year.

Statistics recorded 212,000 survivors down from 221,000 over the previous 12 months.

Analysts have predicted just over 100,000 survivors aged 85 or older will still be alive by 2025.

The figure will almost halve by 2030.

Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority at the Ministry of Finance collected the data with predictions based on life span expectancy.

The median age of men who survived the Holocaust was 81.6 years and women 82.4 years at the end of 2017.

Twenty-nine percent of survivors are older than age 85, 3% are 95 years old or over.

Sixty per cent of survivors are women with 58% aged 72-84, 63% are 85 or older.

Other data shows that 65% of survivors living in Israel are from Europe, 36% born in the Soviet Union 12% in Romania and 6% in Poland.

And 38% of survivors arrived in Israel until 1951.

The majority came to Israel after its independence in 1948.

Between 1952-89, 29% of survivors arrived in the country, the remainder after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Some 65% of survivors from German and Austrian Jewish communities arrived in Israel before 1948.

The Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority is state-operated.

Survivors lived in any country conquered or under direct effect of Nazi Germany between 1933-1945, and refugees flee homes because of Nazi persecution.

By Adam Moses