Back on Sept. 12, 2021, I wrote this column about the dire situation facing our Holocaust Survivors.
I have updated it, as follows…
I wasn’t ready for this, an item telling us that 179,000 Holocaust Survivors live in Israel, but 40,000 of them, 25 percent, live in poverty.
How can this be…I mean about the poverty? Obviously, help coming from various sources is not enough… so are there no children, no grandchildren?
Now this…some 80,000 Holocaust Survivors live in the United States and…and a third of them live in poverty.
This too should not be.
Recently, I read where a particular Jewish group in the US raised millions for Haitians, and even for other undocumented arrivals.
How nice.
Biden…when he was president… chipped in billions from the government.
The newcomers won’t miss a meal.
Survivor Jews go starving.
Coming to America, Jewish Holocaust refugees never got the red-carpet treatment. Not my family, and probably not yours.
Through various memorials and moments of silence we do pay tribute to this Holocaust generation…these, The Last of the Just…if you recall Andre Schwarz Bart’s book of remembrance…but food on the table ought to come first for the living. This is a precious people who merit our love and respect.
The guilt, this too, then, Survivor’s Guilt…a syndrome in which people feel guilty for no reason. There is nothing they did wrong.
Time is short. They won’t be around forever. I told my story here, but not everyone is a writer.
I have been asked to help write their stories and when I was younger I did what I could, but now…who has the strength?
Having a story to tell, but no means to tell it…this too is poverty.
A man visited me a few days before Passover. He asked me for help to write his story in my minimalist style.
Shouldn’t take long, he said.
So happens that it took me 20 years to get my story done. Getting it done simply is not simple. It is hard.
My friend Al suffered from Survivor Guilt. He alone was spared when he went playing with some friends and got back home to find his entire family slaughtered by Ukraine Nazis.
In America, he became a success, but never successful enough to stop feeling guilty…every day.
This is not necessarily typical. In fact, there is nothing typical about any Survivor story. All are different. All are unique. All need to be told.
All need to be heard before it’s too late.
Fellow Jews who have it made might consider offering a helping hand to their brothers and sisters…if there is anything left over after Haiti.
It is not only for the Haitians and the Afghans where the need is burning
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
From the esteemed John w. Cassell: “Jack Engelhard is a writer without peer, and the. conscience of us all.”