MESSAGE FROM DAVID BROG, CUFI’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Last week, an article in the New York Times cited a most troubling statistic. There are approximately 250,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel today. About half of these survivors are living at or below the poverty level.
It was surprising to read that there are still so many Holocaust survivors living in Israel. With every passing day, we tend to think of the Holocaust more and more as a distant event; a terrible monster from the depths of a dark past which can no longer reach its bloody fingers into our bright modern world.
This view is clearly false from a purely demographic perspective. Hundreds of thousands of people who survived that tragedy are still alive and well and living in Israel as well as in our own communities. With their every breath they give testimony to the ever-present possibility of evil and barbarism in this world.
It is distressing to learn that these men and women who’ve suffered so much must now suffer the indignity and pain of living in poverty. Israel can and must take better care of her survivors – this is a basic obligation of the Jewish State. And we should help Israel to meet this obligation.
We will find out how we as an organization can help direct funds to the support of poor Holocaust survivors. We will supply this information to you so that those who wish can contribute a portion of their Night to Honor Israel proceeds towards this effort.
While it is unacceptable that Holocaust survivors live in poverty, this isn’t even the worst of it. What is more repugnant is the fact that so many Jews who survived the horrors of the Holocaust must now live in fear of a second Holocaust. These people survived the death camps and the ghettos. They made their way to Israel and so many of them fought in Israel’s wars of survival. They struggled to build an independent state so that their children and grandchildren could lead normal lives untouched by the horrors that had plagued their own.
Yet today, these survivors together with their children and grandchildren must once again face the threat of annihilation. Hitler has been replaced by Ahmadinejad. The gas chambers have been replaced by nuclear weapons. But to the survivors, the fear must be terribly familiar and terribly real.
Why do all of us work so hard to build and grow this organization? Why do we organize regional events and fly to Washington? What drives us? If we ever needed a more potent symbol of why we are standing with Israel it is this: the image of a Holocaust survivor looking into the eyes of his grandchildren and fearing that it’s happening all over again.
May we work to speed the day when such a scene will never again play itself out. And, with God’s help, may our success come soon and come in time.
Its commendable that CUFI will be there for these badly done to people but whats more important is that the likes of the organisations on the “gravy train” of the Holocaust industry should give back the money stolen for their own aggrandisement to the people it belongs to. There but for the grace of G-d go all of us.
Its time now to stop building costly memorials for those who have gone, and to concentrate on those who are still with us, and who deserve far more than to live in poverty after having suffered so much.