Nearly a quarter million Jewish Holocaust survivors are still alive, with 1,500 in the Philly region

There are nearly a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust alive worldwide, more than 38,000 of whom live in the United States, and around 1,500 in the Philadelphia metro area, according to a newly released report.

Their median age is 86 years old, over half of them are women, and almost all were children during the Holocaust, when 6 million Jewish victims and millions of others were murdered amid systematic persecution by the Nazis.

The findings were issued in a report by the Claims Conference, a nonprofit organization that secures and administers funds for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and maintains a database of Jewish Holocaust survivors worldwide.

Since 1951, the Claims Conference organization has secured more than $90 billion in compensation for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust across the world, and allocates grants to provide services to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, including home care, medicine, transportation, and food. Last year, the organization said, it distributed $560 million in compensation and allocated $750 million in grants.

Due to its extensive global outreach efforts, the group said in its report, it is “unlikely that there are many survivors who are unknown” in its database.

The findings are detailed in the newly released Global Demographic Report on Jewish Holocaust Survivors, which arrives just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday.

The data, Claims Conference executive vice president Greg Schneider said in a statement, “forces us to accept the reality that Holocaust survivors won’t be with us forever.”

Here is what the report found:

In total, the group estimates, there are about 245,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors residing in more than 90 countries around the world. That number represents the “lower-bound” on the estimate of survivors alive today, the report said, noting that the number could be as high as 272,000 people.

Of those survivors, around 38,400 reside in the United States. The U.S. is home to the second-largest population of Jewish Holocaust survivors in the world behind Israel, which houses 119,300 survivors, the report found. France, Russia, and Germany are also home to large populations of survivors. In total, about 87% of Jewish Holocaust survivors live in those five countries, the report found, with smaller populations in Ukraine, Canada, Hungary, Australia, and other nations.

In the United States, 90% of Jewish Holocaust survivors live in 10 states, according to the Claims Conference. Forty percent of the country’s Jewish Holocaust survivors live in New York state, followed by California (16%), Florida (7%), Illinois (6%), New Jersey (6%), Massachusetts (5%), Pennsylvania (4%), Maryland (3%), Ohio (2%), and Michigan (1%).

The Philadelphia metro area, meanwhile, is home to about 1,500 Jewish Holocaust survivors — just under 1,000 of whom live in the city itself, according to the group.

Nearly half of all living Jewish Holocaust survivors, 47%, were born in the former Soviet Union. Twenty-two% come from Eastern Europe, which includes Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. And 21% are from Northern Africa, most of whom were born in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Just 10% of living survivors are from Western Europe, which includes Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands. A small number of survivors were born in other areas but lived in countries impacted by Nazi persecution during the Holocaust.

The median age of a living Jewish Holocaust survivor today is 86. But overall, survivors range in age from 77 to more than 100, with birth years ranging from 1912 to 1946. About 20% of survivors are over 90.

A vast majority of survivors, about 95%, were children when they experienced Nazi persecution, the report found. About 56%, were under 10 years old during that time. And today, about half of all child survivors are 77 to 85 years old.

Most living Jewish Holocaust survivors are female, with women making up 61% of the population, the Claims Conference found.

Due to survivors’ advancing age, the Claims Conference said, most are approaching or are already in “a period of life characterized by increasing costs of care.”

About 40% of survivors currently receive services from agencies funded by Claims Conference grants, the report found. But since 2020, the group has seen an average of 28,000 new requests for care, such as home care and other services.

And while the number of Holocaust survivors is “unfortunately but inevitably” decreasing, the Claims Conference wrote in its report, the need for care among living survivors is increasing.

“[The data] clearly indicates that most survivors are at a period of life where their need for care and services is growing,” Claims Conference president Gideon Taylor said. “Now is when they need us most.”