On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021, some 174,500 Holocaust survivors are living in Israel, according to data from the Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority in the Social Equality Ministry released Tuesday.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Since Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2020, which fell after the COVID pandemic reached Israel and was most fatal to older Israelis, 14,264 survivors have died, an average of 41 per day.
At the beginning of 2020, the government counted some 192,000 survivors living in Israel, a number that for the first time included Jews from North Africa and the Middle East who were victims of persecution linked to the Nazis.
According to the ministry data, 83% of the survivors are over 80, with an average age of 84.5. Another 18%, some 31,000, are over 90, and 900 have reached 100. Some 60% of the survivors recognized by the authority are women.
Slightly over two-thirds (64%) were born in Europe, with natives of the former USSR comprising 36%. Another 12% (25,00) were born in Romania; and 5.5% (9,600) were born in Poland. Nearly 10,000 others were born in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Germany.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
Thirty-six percent of the survivors were born in Asia and north Africa, including 32,000 Jews from Morocco and Algeria who were targeted by antisemitic attacks and various restrictions under the Vichy regime. Another 11% were born in Baghdad and experienced the riots that spread through Iraq in mid-1941, and 7% were born in Tunisia and Libya, both of which enacted race laws and sent Jews to forced labor camps.
Haifa is home to the largest population of survivors: 12,100, followed by Jerusalem (10,800), Tel Aviv (9,500), Ashdod (8,700), Netanya (8,500), Beersheba (7,600), Petah Tikva (7,000), and Rishon Lezion (6,900).
According to the numbers, there were 14.8 million Jews in the world in 2019, 1.8 million fewer than in 1939 on the eve of World War II, and 3.3 million more than there were in 1948.
Israel remains the country with the largest number of Jews in the world (6.8 million), followed by the United States (5.7 million), France (448,000), and Canada (393,000).
Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day celebrations begin on the evening of Wednesday, April 7, 80 years after the start of the Holocaust.
State events begin with a ceremony at Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem at 8 p.m. Both President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will participate.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
