About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building's Haitian staff in their apartments. "That reminds me of Anne Frank," Rachel Blumberg, president and CEO of the center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "There's a kindred bond between our residents being Jewish and seeing the place that the Haitians have gone through."
Marat Rivkin, 88, has only one photograph of himself with his mother from World War II. It was taken in 1941 at a Soviet train station, so he could get help finding her if they were separated. "My mother ran in and said, 'The war has begun.' I didn't know what she meant, but she was crying and told me and my grandmother to begin packing," Rivkin told Brooklyn reporter Hannah Kliger in Russian.
The number of Jewish Holocaust survivors alive worldwide has fallen to around 196,600, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference). That's down 220,000 survivors from a year ago - an 11% drop, the Claims Conference said. The median age of survivors is now 87, with many now in their 90s and older, numbers show. Nearly all Jewish Holocaust survivors (97%) are "child survivors" who were born in 1928 or later.
Each and every Holocaust survivor alive today is a miracle of our time. And since Hanukkah is a time for celebration and remembering the miracles of the past, organizations throughout South Florida honored these survivors during the holiday season - hosting events for them to gather, enjoy and revel in community support. Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust, a Palm Beach County-based nonprofit group, hosted a luncheon for survivors on Dec. 7.
On Sunday, two gunmen killed at least fifteen people at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, in an attack that targeted the country's Jewish community as it began its celebration of Hanukkah. At least forty more were wounded. The gunmen were father and son; the younger man is in custody and in critical condition, and the older man was killed. The gathering at Bondi Beach had been organized by Chabad, a branch of Orthodox Judaism that holds cultural and religious events around the world.