A new program from the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims is helping survivors learn to navigate the digital landscape by pairing them up with volunteers who teach them how to use tablet computers.
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Some 180 survivors have already signed up for the project, and while it is already yielding results, more volunteers are needed, especially in periphery communities.
Approximately 160,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel. After the COVID outbreak began in 2020, the Joint and the ERI research institute collaborated on a study whose findings revealed that elderly Israelis who were more comfortable using computers and the Internet found it easier to cope with COVID and the lockdowns it entailed.
The foundation considered how the COVID pandemic could be leveraged to help bring survivors closer to the social circles from which they had been cut off, and decided to teach them the necessary digital skills through the new "Connected Program." The foundation hands out tablets, and free two-year Internet service packages, and provides one-on-one instructional meetings for survivors in their own homes.
Idit Ben Shahar, who is overseeing the program, says that Holocaust survivors "are dealing with a very significant obstacle when it comes to creating a digital lifestyle."
Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are following the program to evaluate its results.
Meanwhile, the survivors and the volunteers appear to be becoming fast analog friends. Omer, who volunteers with Tuvia, 85, says that they have developed a special bond.
"We meet once a week. Every time it moves me," Omer says.
"Omer talks to me and connects me to the tablet. It keeps me busy," Tuvia adds.
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