The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany — also known as the Claims Conference — is providing a $10.1 million increase in funding this year to California-based Holocaust survivors, according to a Claims Conference’s December press release. The money will fund home care and other services, the release said.
Various local social services agencies, including Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles (JFS) and Bet Tzedek, a Los Angeles-based pro bono legal aid agency, will distribute the funds on behalf of the Claims Conference. Organizations in the East Bay, Long Beach, Orange County and elsewhere are receiving funds as well.
Cally Clein, coordinator of Holocaust Survivor Services at Jewish Federation and Family Services Orange County, welcomed the announcement. She said home care is an important service for a survivor population, and not just because of their ages. Many survivors have behavior and psychological issues that make them reluctant to live in nursing homes, or they lack the support systems of family members from whom they are estranged, and therefore rely on services, she said.
“It’s almost part of like [the German government] making good … trying to help them in a time now when cost of care is so very high that this affords them … some help to manage their daily needs,” Clein said.
Experts estimate that the average age of a survivor in the United States is 82. According to remarks made last year by then-CEO of Bet Tzedek Sandor Samuels before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, about 100,000 survivors live in the United States, an estimated one-fourth of whom live at or below the poverty line.
The additional funds are a result of negotiations between the German government and the Claims Conference, which negotiates with the German government on behalf of Holocaust victims, provides grants to organizations that assist survivors, runs its own compensation programs and more, according to Julius Berman, Claims Conference board chairman. Founded in 1951, the Claims Conference provided $306 million in grants last year to agencies in 47 countries, according to its website.
The new earmarked money from the Claims Conference will fund home-bathing, home-delivered meals, housekeeping, transportation and even dental care, home modifications and other medical equipment. Securing funds for home care from the German government and making those monies available to social service groups, Berman said, is an increasingly important part of what the Claims Conference does.
“[It] is becoming a major charge of the Claims Conference to come to the Germans and explain [the importance of home care for survivors] to them,” Berman said.
JFS is a longtime grant recipient of the Claims Conference. This year, the organization is receiving $2 million more than it received last year, according to Vivian Sauer, JFS director of program development. She said the need for home care funds for survivors continues to increase.
“For the last several years, we have been experiencing a significant, almost exponential increase in demand for home care services by survivors who are getting older, more frail and have multiple health problems and need a lot more help in the house,” she said. “We, as well as other agencies nationally, have been seeing this trend, and the Claims Conference understands that and have been able to lobby the German government for a significant increase in home care funds.
“Hopefully we will be able to provide this year the necessary home care that survivors are needing,” she said.
Lisa Hoffman, program director of Holocaust Services at Bet Tzedek, said the organization’s funding for 2015 has not been set yet, but that it received $30,000 from the Claims Conference last year and will put the funds toward legal assistance for survivors applying for reparations from the German government, and other forms of financial assistance. Bet Tzedek attorneys also are charged with assisting survivors in applying for Los Angeles County-sponsored home care services.
In an email to the Journal, Nicholas Levenhagen, a staff attorney at Bet Tzedek, estimated that he has “worked on approximately 100 cases helping survivors to access needed health services.”
In Orange County, Clein expects her organization, which assists approximately 300 survivors, to receive an estimated $1 million for them and to assist an additional 12 to15 survivors who have been on the waiting list for services, she said. She stressed the importance of the nature of the assistance.
“This is not a reparation payment,” Clein said. “This is financial assistance to Holocaust survivors who are in need of some care.”
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