Selfhelp Publishes White Paper on Holocaust Survivor Population in New York

To plan for the future provision of services, Selfhelp recently undertook a demographic analysis of the existing population of Nazi victims in New York, and projected the numbers and need through the year 2025. The study, entitled, Sixty-Five Years after Liberation: Holocaust Survivors in New Today through 2025, yielded some surprising and not-so-surprising results:

1. In the year 2025, we project that approximately 19,000 Holocaust survivors will still be living in the New York City Metropolitan Area.
2. This last generation of survivors is likely to have complex needs. Fully 35 percent of survivors will be coping with serious or chronic illnesses, and 51 percent will be “very poor” or “near poor” under Federal guidelines. Therefore this group of survivors will have significant needs for home health care and financial assistance.

In sum, although the total survivor population is decreasing, the number of survivors who will require services will continue to grow as this population ages and begins to develop increasing frailty and other debilitating conditions. The need to provide services, and funding for those services, will remain vital for this last generation of survivors, and as such, the study substantiates the urgency of our Project Legacy initiative.