Ahead of Yom HaShoah, 133,000 Holocaust Survivors Are Living in Israel

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be observed tomorrow, Monday, the Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority announced today (Sunday) that about 133,000 survivors live in Israel. This marks a significant decline compared with previous years, and the survivors' average age now stands at 87.

The data show that about 31,000 of them are already over 90, and more than 1,000 have crossed 100. For comparison, a year ago, on the eve of Yom HaShoah, 120,507 Holocaust survivors, Holocaust refugees, and victims of antisemitic persecution were living in Israel.

As noted, tomorrow evening the State of Israel will honor the memory of the six million with the opening of Holocaust Remembrance Day events for 5786. This year marks 81 years since the end of the war. The central ceremony at Yad Vashem, which will open tomorrow at 8:00 p.m., will focus on the theme "Steadfastness and Continuity." Unlike in years past, this year's ceremony will highlight the transition from living testimony to preserved memory, with the understanding that the survivors' generation is gradually disappearing.

Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan said ahead of the memorial day: "The biological clock does not stop, and we are at a critical moment in time. In just a few years there will no longer be survivors among us who can say, 'I was there.' The responsibility for passing the torch now passes to us, as a society and as a state. This is not only a historical duty; it is a moral obligation that will never expire."

On Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., a two-minute memorial siren will sound across the country, after which the wreath-laying ceremony will begin at the foot of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monument at Yad Vashem. Throughout the day, schools, youth movements, and public institutions will hold "Each Person Has a Name" events and read the names of the victims, alongside "Zikaron BaSalon" gatherings held in private homes across the country.