Holocaust Survivors Protest Size of Payments Planned by Israel

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: August 6, 2007
JERUSALEM, Aug. 5 — Several dozen Israeli survivors of the Holocaust, supported by hundreds of younger relatives and supporters, marched in protest on Sunday in front of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office, saying that a planned government stipend was too small, insulting both the living and the dead.

Carrying signs that said, “Let us live in dignity,” the demonstrators demanded that Mr. Olmert issue a formal statement revoking a government decision to provide a monthly stipend next year of 83 shekels, about $20, to the country’s Holocaust survivors.

A few wore yellow Stars of David, reminiscent of the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear; many wore black T-shirts with the words in yellow: “The Holocaust is still with us — the survivors.”

Shmulik Reinisch, one of the protesters and a Holocaust survivor, said, “The heart shrivels that this demonstration is needed for the state to give out the money we deserve.” He said that the government’s decisions were painful, adding, “We want to return to our anonymity and we want to die in dignity.”

Mr. Olmert has already said that the government will review the decision and that he will meet Wednesday with survivor representatives to consider how to divide the money available, perhaps with a needs test.

He told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday that the topic was volatile and delicate. “Those who send to the newspapers a picture of a woman in camp pajamas, wearing a yellow patch, drag the discussion down to an unacceptable level, and these pictures will not dictate the government’s action,” he said.

The social welfare minister, Isaac Herzog, said that the emotive march, “all in the name of a financial dispute with the government, is an insult to the collective memory of the Holocaust.”

The government says that there are about 240,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel, and that about 120,000 of them are living at or near the poverty level.

An earlier estimate of 80,000 at or near the poverty level did not include those from the former Soviet Union who fled their homes to escape the Nazis. The revised larger figure is considered a political gesture to Russian-speaking voters, but it dilutes the roughly $29 million the government says it can spend in 2008.

Part of the criticism is that, under the government’s plan, the amount of the stipend would double in 2009 and go up again in 2011, when more of the survivors are likely to have died.

A proposed $72 billion government budget for 2008, up about 6 percent from 2007, was presented to the cabinet on Sunday. It widens the deficit to 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product, but most of the increase is to allow more spending on defense and education.

Mr. Olmert’s office also confirmed that he would meet with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Monday in Jericho, in the West Bank, as a gesture of respect to the Palestinians.