The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced this week that it will award $10 million over five years for emergency services for impoverished Holocaust survivors living in North America.
The Weinberg Holocaust Survivors Emergency Assistance Fund provides medical equipment and medications, dental care, transportation, food and short-term home care for Holocaust survivors.
The money from the Baltimore-based foundation will be managed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, based in New York. The claims conference was founded in 1951 and manages government and private grants throughout the world.
The Claims Conference estimates there are about 500,000 Holocaust survivors alive worldwide, with about 144,000 in North America and 2,400 in Maryland.
An estimated 37 percent of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. live at or below the poverty level, about five times the rate of other elderly, according estimates from the conference. The average age of a survivor is 79, and one in four lives alone, according to the Claim Conference.
"Many aging victims of the Holocaust require assistance to meet their basic needs for shelter, food and medical care," said Rachel Monroe, president of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, in a statement. "The grant for emergency assistance is expected to help at least 10,000 Nazi victims living in poverty throughout North America. The Weinberg Foundation remains committed to honoring these courageous men and women whose memories we call upon to educate the world today and for generations to come."
The Weinberg Foundation has awarded $6.3 million in grants in the past two decades to 54 organizations serving Holocaust survivors in North America.
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