70 percent of Jewish Holocaust survivors will be gone in the next 10 years, a report shows
The report's analysis of population projections and mortality rates provides details through 2040. It is based on the extensive data collected since 1952 by the Claims Conference, which includes survivors who receive direct payments or social welfare services funded by the organization as a result of ongoing negotiations with Germany.
90 percent of Holocaust survivors will pass away in the next 15 years
Notably, nearly 50% of all Holocaust survivors will pass away within the next six years, while 70% will die within 10 years and 90% within 15 years, according to the report titled " Vanishing Witnesses."
Those still alive are often of frail health and suffer from ailments that come with age and have been amplified by traumas in their youth.
Six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.
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It is not clear exactly how many Jews survived the death camps, the ghettos or somewhere in hiding across Nazi-occupied Europe, but their numbers were a far cry from the pre-war Jewish population in Europe.
In Poland, of the 3.3 million Jews living there in 1939, only about 300,000 survived.
Around 560,000 Jews lived in Germany in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power. After the Holocaust, their numbers had diminished to about 15,000 through emigration and extermination.
After the end of World War II, survivors settled all over the globe and even today they are still living in 90 different countries.
Mortality rates vary across locations
The 'Vanishing Witnesses' report shows that mortality rates for survivors vary greatly across locations depending on access to health care and economic stability.
For example, Israel, which is home to about half of all Holocaust survivors, had 110,100 survivors as of October 2024 and is estimated to see their population decline to 62,900 by 2030, a drop of 43%.
The United States had 34,600 in the fall of 2024, but is projected to lose 39% over that same time, dropping to 21,100 survivors. Countries in the former Soviet Union had 25,500 survivors in October 2024, but are expected to be at 11,800 in five years, down 54 % by the start of 2030.
'This report is a stark reminder that our time is almost up, our survivors are leaving us and this is the moment to hear their voices,' said Gideon Taylor, the president of the Claims Conference.
Many survivors worry who will keep alive their memories
Albrecht Weinberg, a 100-year-old survivor from Germany who lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust, said that even today the horrendous memories are haunting him. 'I sleep with it, I wake up with it, I sweat, I have nightmares; that is my present.'
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Weinberg survived the concentration and death camps Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora, Bergen-Belsen and three death marches at the end of the war. He spent many years teaching high school students and others about the atrocities he had to live through. Still, he worries what will happen when he is no longer around to bear witness.
'When my generation is not in this world anymore, when we disappear from the world, then the next generation can only read it out of the book.'
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WIRED
2 days ago
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How One Wikipedia Editor Unraveled the ‘Single Largest Self-Promotion Operation' in the Site's History
Photograph:Quick—what are the top entries in the category "Wikipedia articles written in the greatest number of languages"? The answer is countries. Turkey tops the list with Wikipedia entries in 332 different languages, while the US is second with 327 and Japan is third with 324. Other common words make their appearance as one looks down the list. "Dog" (275 languages) tops "cat" (273). Jesus (274) beats "Adolf Hitler" (242). And all of them beat "sex" (122), which is also bested by "fever," "Chiang Kai-Shek," and the number "13." But if you had looked at the list a couple months back, something would have been different. Turkey, the US, and Japan were still in the same order near the top of the leaderboard, but the number one slot was occupied by an unlikely contender: David Woodard, who had Wikipedia entries in 335 different languages. You ... haven't heard of David Woodard? Woodard is a composer who infamously wrote a "prequiem"—that is, a "pre requiem"—in 2001 for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who had murdered 168 people with a truck bomb. The piece was to be performed at a church near McVeigh's execution site in Terre Haute, Indiana, then recorded and played on the radio so that McVeigh would have a chance to hear it. According to the LA Times, which spoke to the composer, "Woodard's hope in performing the 12-minute piece, he said, is to 'cause the soul of Timothy McVeigh to go to heaven.'" According to BBC coverage from the time, Woodard "says McVeigh is '33 and nearly universally despised at the time of his execution'—like Jesus Christ." Hoo boy. Woodard also had a scheme to help save Nueva Germania, an 1880s colony in Paraguay that was designed to let German culture flourish away from the influence of European Jews. Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth, was one of the founding colonists. 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Inquiring minds want to know, which is why people have posted questions to sites like Reddit over the last year asking about the Woodard situation. "Is he super important and this is the first I'm hearing of him?" one asked. "Is it a superfan polyglot who wants everyone to know about his favourite writer/composer? Is it someone using AI to artificially boost this guy's performance metrics?" The Investigation A Wikipedia editor who goes by "Grnrchst" recently decided to find out, diving deep into the articles about Woodard and into any edits that placed his name in other articles. The results of this lengthy and tedious investigation were written up in the August 9 edition of the Signpost, a volunteer-run online newspaper about Wikipedia. Grnrchst's conclusion was direct: "I discovered what I think might have been the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history, spanning over a decade and covering as many as 200 accounts and even more proxy IP addresses." 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Yahoo
3 days ago
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