A troubling wave of antisemitism has surfaced in France, where a Jewish resident is enduring persistent threats in a building already marked by tragedy. Nancy is facing relentless antisemitic harassment, including death threats and Nazi symbols, in the same building where 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was murdered in 2018. Nancy has already filed multiple police reports.

"Ma vie est mise entre guillemets depuis deux mois"

Victime d'actes antisémites, d'intimidations et de menaces, cette mère de famille habitant le 11e arrondissement de Paris témoigne pic.twitter.com/6o5sJARVZT

— BFM Paris Île-de-France (@BFMParis) October 29, 2024

 The harassment has escalated in recent weeks, with perpetrators defacing the building's common areas with swastikas and targeting Nancy's personal space. Her door and mailbox have been vandalized with antisemitic death threats, some written in Arabic, while Nazi symbols and Stars of David have been scrawled across the corridor. French news channel BFM brought the case to public attention after visiting Nancy's home and documenting the ongoing threats.

"The intimidation began with letters, then evolved to symbols appearing in the stairwell and elevator," Nancy told BFM in a visibly distressed state. "About two weeks ago, threatening letters started arriving. I've already submitted six police reports and find myself at the police station every three days to follow up. My life has been completely disrupted. I can't sleep, I feel lost, threatened, and anxious. I simply cannot comprehend how someone could target another human being this way."

These incidents are unfolding at the same Avenue Philippe-Auguste address where Mireille Knoll, an elderly Holocaust survivor, met a tragic end. Knoll was tortured and killed by two assailants, Yacine Mihoub and Alex Krimbikos, who stabbed the 85-year-old woman before setting her apartment ablaze. The French judiciary officially classified her murder as an antisemitic hate crime.

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The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum is set to showcase a collection of Disney-inspired artworks created by Holocaust survivors and victims. These rare pieces, including a Pinocchio-adorned jar buried to escape Nazi persecution and a Mickey Mouse birthday card preserved for over seven decades, offer a unique window into how Jews, especially children, found solace and expression through familiar cartoon characters during one of history's darkest periods.

For 80 years, these artworks remained hidden, some wrapped, damaged, or concealed, yet they managed to survive the journey from concentration camps and ghettos. Often the sole possessions of Holocaust survivors, they have now found their way into Yad Vashem's collections.

As part of the "relocation" to the new Shaffer collections center, which houses millions of historical artifacts – objects, documents, artworks, and photographs from countless sources – artistic treasures created by Jews during the Holocaust have been uncovered. Most of these were made by children and teenagers who expressed their emotions through works featuring characters familiar to almost everyone – Walt Disney films.

"One of the most touching Disney drawings was created in March 1941, at the height of the war, inspired by the film 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'" curator Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, director of Yad Vashem's Art Collection, says. "Henri Kichka, father of Michel Kichka, was then a 15-year-old boy who had lost his family in the gas chambers and found refuge in the magical world of fairy tales. After the war, he returned to Brussels and collected items from the family apartment, including this drawing which he gave to his daughter Hanna, who immigrated to Israel in 1970. Hanna passed the drawing to her son Yaron, who received a dedication from his grandfather – 'To Yaron, from his grandpa.'"

Drawing to survive

Kichka was not the only one who found comfort in Disney films. Suzanne Schick was 14 when she fled Austria at the outbreak of World War II and hid in Yugoslavia with about 1,200 Jews awaiting immigration permits to Israel. On her 15th birthday, her friends prepared a gift – a box with a drawing of a ship and a Mickey Mouse greeting, which she kept close to her heart for 72 years as the last memory of her childhood, until she entrusted it to Yad Vashem for future generations.

Another item, one of the most prominent artworks created during the Holocaust using cartoon characters, is a colorful jar featuring Pinocchio. The jar was created before the war by artist Lilly Kasticher from Yugoslavia. "When the war broke out and she was deported with her family to Auschwitz, Lilly buried the jar in the ground along with documents and photographs as a hope to preserve a last memory," explains curator Michael Tal, manager of Yad Vashem's Artifacts Collection. "Lilly encouraged her fellow prisoners to write poems and draw in order to survive, and after the war, she even brought the creations to Israel inside the jar she had buried in the ground."

The collections center, spanning 63,300 square feet, includes four underground floors and an additional floor housing five of the world's most advanced laboratories for preserving paper, photographs, artifacts, textiles, and art. The center will preserve about 227 million pages of documentation, tens of thousands of artifacts and artworks, and hundreds of thousands of photographs and testimonies from Holocaust survivors.

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It happened in late March 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. When he was on lockdown with his family in their home in Brooklyn Heights, New York, Oren Schneider got a phone call from his sister Michal in Israel, informing him that their beloved grandfather, Alexander Roziak, passed away at the age of 94. 

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When Oren hung up, he immediately pulled out his computer to continue working on a memoir of his grandfather that he had begun shortly before. He now felt more compelled than ever to tell his extraordinary story. The result was "The Apprentice of Buchenwald," which was published in English in the United States and has recently been translated into Hebrew and published in Israel. 

"Grandpa was my superhero," Oren told Israel Hayom in an interview coinciding with the book's Hebrew edition coming out. "I always appreciated him as someone who acted in an impossible time and against all odds, raised a family and maintained sanity and humanity."

Q: Did your grandfather speak openly about his experience during the Holocaust? 

"Grandpa always shared. He also didn't mind if people came and took his picture. On the other hand, he said: 'Who would be interested in that?' When people asked him to tell [his story]l, he would speak and everyone sat enthralled. But when I asked him if he would write a book about it, he replied: 'So many stories have been written about the Holocaust.' I never thought a book would materialize either." 

Family history

Oren's mother, Maya, who was a medical student and the daughter of Alexander and Yehudit – both Holocaust survivors – met Menachem Schneider in the 1970s, a member of a veteran Israeli family.

Menachem Schneider was a Skyhawk pilot and flight school instructor. Tragedy struck on Feb. 29, 1976, at 8:55 a.m., near Masada, when a plane in which Schneider was flying with a trainee collided with another plane in the sky. He and the other two pilots were killed. 

Twenty-three years old at the time of his death, Schneider was survived by a pregnant widow, and Oren, who was only 13 months old at the time and as such, never got to know his father. 

"My mother had an infant and was pregnant and had two parents who were Holocaust survivors, bruised and scarred," Oren shared. "As a child, I remember reciting Kaddish [mourner's prayer] from the age of 4 in the military cemetery in Netanyah. I grew up differently. My mother was a brilliant person, it was clear that she would achieve great success, but this tragic accident disrupted the trajectory of her life." 

To support her family, Maya worked long shifts at the hospital. To help her, Alexander and Yehudit, the grandparents, moved into an apartment two flights below. Yehudit ran an office supply store and Alexander was a businessman who always looked for the next venture. He was one of the first to arrive in Japan in the 1960s and eventually was one of the main importers of the Sharp electronics corporation.

"My grandfather was an impressive man," Oren said. "Tall with a European look and well-groomed as if he had just stepped out of a magazine. His entire life he showed that he was strong, but from a young age I realized that he was hiding a vulnerable part inside him. In Israel, he faced problems and troubles, and all the time news came: There was another war, his son-in-law was killed and there were orphans that needed to be raised."

While Oren's mother was at the hospital, he would go straight to his grandparents after work. His grandfather used to tell him about his childhood and growing up in Europe and when everything went dark. 

"From the age of eight, I sat with him and recorded him, because his stories fascinated me. He mainly spoke about his childhood, about the crazy situations he went through in the concentration camp. For example, when they didn't have a bed, to keep their body warm, they took turns rubbing each other. He shared everything. He did not hold back, but he shared in the safest place possible - at home and calmly."

Before Buchenwald

Alexander was born in 1927 in Sečovce, a small town in what was Czechoslovakia back then into a wealthy merchant family who lived among the local aristocrats. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, the family's world was turned upside down and their property was confiscated. Alexander and his father were separated from his mother and fought for their lives in the cold and hunger, but thanks to their resourcefulness and survival skills, they managed to secure a position at a factory that operated outside the Buchenwald concentration camp that produced rifles for the Nazis. 

Seventeen years old at the time, Alexander was in charge of delivering materials and messages but quickly found himself to go-between between members of the resistance who also worked in the factory. 

One time, Grisha – another prisoner in the camp and former Russian officer – sent Alexander to deliver instructions to Kristoff, who was in charge of rifle sight, to sabotage them in a certain way that would make them useless early on in battle. 

"It's an amazing story," Oren said. "I really remember that I once came across a story about damaged Czech rifles that arrived in Israel. It was recorded in the archives of the Yishuv during the War of Independence. My grandfather was something when it came to manual work and technical understanding. Although he did not sabotage the rifles himself, he was brave in passing on the messages. I find that kind of courage incredible."

Q: Where do you think that courage came from? 

"He was fearless because he was 17 years old and a special guy. After all, you send 18-year-olds to fight and do things because they are young and think they are invincible. I'm not sure that a 40-year-old man, with a family, wouldn't hesitate. It's probably in the DNA of our existence."

Alexander survived the Holocaust, as did his parents. By the end of the war, he was in charge of typewriters in the camp, having been appointed to the position thanks to his technical skills that were evident from a young age and helped him survive.

"I inherited the survival mechanism from my grandfather: to think positively, have courage, and take care of myself. This was his motto. Grandpa always told me: 'Unless you take care of how you look and how you behave; unless you protect yourself and demand what you deserve – no one will do this for you. He encapsulated all his wisdom and lessons in the way he raised me."

As such, Alexander was the father figure in Oren's life. 

"On the outside, the two of us are similar, and we both have a high level of restraint," Oren said. "I am a person of details and numbers. He was a man of the big picture and work. We both had difficulty with an aggressive and disrespectful culture. This is also one of the reasons why I am very comfortable living in America now."

Q: Do you mean that you found Israeli culture aggressive? 

"Even as a child, I could connect to it. When I was six and in school in Netanya when one of the kids hit me. In this too grandpa and I are very similar. He went through his trauma when he was 14-17, and I went through mine when I was 2-5. I am very similar to him in the ability to create complete detachment. We both suppress things, but I don't wear a mask, just like he didn't."

One of the stories featured in "Apprentice of Buchenwald" is of a trip Oren took with his grandfather in the early 1990s to Sečovce, where – as mentioned above – Alexander was born. From there the two traveled together to Buchenwald.

"I remember that we entered the camp gate and there was no one there," Oren recalled, "He was terribly disappointed that the wooden barracks were destroyed. We toured and he told me: 'Here we would walk, and this is where the camp was.' He remembered everything and shared everything."

Q: Did your grandfather ever say that he hated Germans? 

"No, he hated the people who hurt his family and murdered his uncles, but it was natural for him to separate between the two. He didn't believe in settling scores and revenge. He always thought positively and how to live this day as the first and last one."

Q: Essentially he was the one who raised you. 

"Absolutely. He tried to influence me as the male role model in my life. He taught me how to shave and dress. He was the closest person to me. Every summer he and grandma took us all to Europe. There he felt at home, preferably in a German-speaking country. Usually Austria, but sometimes also Switzerland or Germany. He felt culturally comfortable when he was served by German speakers. Maybe it was a kind of revenge. The ability to show up there and say: 'I'm here.'"

Q: How well do you think you knew your grandfather? 

"My memories are of a man who concealed more than he revealed. I didn't crack all his secrets. I don't know how he dealt with the demons of the past. In the years when he was really active, I was very young. As a teenager, I had a lot of speculation about what he did."

Giving new life to old jewelry 

Oren, 48, grew up in an unstable environment, having lost his father and his mother having a difficult life. Still, he was an excellent student and served in the IDF in Unit 8200 and reached the rank of major. After he was discharged from the military, he worked in high-tech but felt like it was not his cup of tea. In 2004, he married Sharon and moved to the US to study at Columbia University. 

"After getting my degree, I joined a large consulting firm, in finance," Oren said. "But I realized that I needed to return to my roots as an entrepreneur. I was looking for industries that were far from me and that I could change. I was introduced to someone who worked in jewelry and gemstones. Together we founded a consulting company that worked with governments and large entities, and we did interesting business. Today I lead CIRCA, a company that gives a second life to old watches and jewelry, with 22 locations worldwide – from Hong Kong to Beverly Hills."

Q: What did your grandpa say when you decided to move to the US? 

"We spoke almost every day. I still have his voicemails on my phone, and from time to time I listen to them. For grandpa, work came first. He would call and say: 'I hope I'm not disturbing you.' And if the call went to voicemail, he would say, 'Excellent, a sign that you are busy. Call me back when you can.'

He would say, "'If you choose to follow your dreams and passion and they are somewhere else, that's fine. Every person should be in a place where he finds peace and satisfaction.' He spoke specifically about the US because he knew that most of his great uncles – his father's brothers – moved to America and built dynasties, although the relationship with them was completely cut off." 

Family tree

Oren not only told his grandfather's story but also dug deep into Alexander's family history through MyHeritage online genealogy platform. 

"I wanted to understand what happened 120 years ago when members of the family dispersed," he said. "Most of them started families and lived overseas. They do not know Israel and have not visited it. They are Jewish, but Reform. I contacted them and got to know many of them."

Q: Are you in touch with them? 

"The other half of the family became ultra-Orthodox. They moved to Bnei Brak and Jerusalem. The others settled in Ohio and New York. Among them are a professor at Harvard, a psychologist at Yale, and a neuroscientist from Stanford, all of whom are scholars and look like my grandfather. They know nothing about their family member who survived the Holocaust and is the brother of their beloved father. Sixty professors and doctors came together for a Zoom call, and I told them about everything I discovered. In the last year and a half, I connected with memes of the family that I knew existed, but I didn't know how to reach them. They reached out after reading the book." 

As Oren moved to the United States to live with his family and build a business there, his relationship with his grandfather focused on phone calls and visits back home. 

"In his last years, every time we parted, he hugged me and told me: 'This is the last time we meet.' I told him: 'We will also arrive in March, so hold on.' The last time we met, in December 2019, I thought it was indeed the last time because he was already very weak. In many ways when I heard of his death I was relieved. But he is with me all the time. I remember him as strong, optimistic, and active."

Listening to old recordings

With the outbreak of the pandemic, the world came to a halt, and so did Schneider's business. 

"I was at home and existential thoughts crossed my mind. You try to think where your help will come from. Then I felt a desire to listen to my grandfather's tapes."

These were the old recordings Oren recorded as a child between 1995 and 2008. 

"I was always connected to my grandfather's story and I didn't plan to do anything with the recorded material," Oren explained. "I wanted to make sure that the story was preserved. We had many hours of recorded conversations, so I listened to the material and realized that I wanted to write his story."

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To learn how to write a memoir Schneider even took a Zoom workshop. 

"I did an intensive course. I felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel. When I received the message that my grandfather had passed away, it pinched my heart that he wouldn't be able to read the book, but I continued and after two months I had a draft ready. I was in a trance because I am a practical person. I realized that the world is about to get out of the pandemic and I will be drawn to places again others, therefore I must finish the project."

Q: Do you think there is less interest now in Holocaust literature? 

"I don't think so. Our generation is reaching a place where the burden of responsibility and the burden of memory falls on them. Twenty years ago this was not evident to me, but now I know that one of my duties as an Israeli and a Jew living in the largest Jewish city in the world is to pass on our story." 

Q: Have you thought of having it adapted to film? 

"We will probably make it into a series. After consulting with professionals who understand the industry, they told me the book has too many details and content for one film. This will happen because it is too important a story not to be told. Although it is in the early stages, it is progressing."

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A new exhibition called "The Power of Words" will launch at the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem featuring 40 inspiring statements by Holocaust survivors. 

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"The world is round. Do good and God will send good back to you. Always strive to give, to respect, to contribute and to add good to the world," Holocaust survivor Smadar Nicole Shaulof, who was born in 1938 in Tunis, said. 

"I am from the generation of Holocaust survivors. We founded the State from scratch and passed this most precious gift on to the younger generation. Guard it fiercely," Meir Reichardt, who was born in 1930 in Pruszków, Poland, said.

"Continue to be young and fun as you are now. Love everyone and everyone will love you back," said Dina Peled, born in 1942 in Murafa, Ukraine. 

The opening ceremony will be attended by founder Dr. Mike Evans and president Michael Evans Jr.

Each quote includes a photograph of the survivor and a QR code that gives access to his or her personal story. The 40 statements were chosen by the members of the Dolls and Dreams group for Holocaust survivors.

Michal Fundaminsky, a therapist who works with the group, said, "We founded the group about 12 years ago to aid Holocaust survivors living in the city. , despite the suffering and difficulties that life brought to them, with a lot of wisdom, life experience, respect, and values, they managed to discern what is really important, to see and learn to appreciate the good in everything. The purpose of the exhibition, as its name 'The Power of Words' reflects, is that words can cause people to stop for a moment and make a change, and precisely in the stormy days we are going through."

Daniel Voiczek, CEO of the museum, said, "We are happy and excited to host such a unique exhibition. We have all asked ourselves many times how it is possible to survive an impossible inferno and continue to grow and strengthen in life. In my opinion, the exhibition gives us the answer to this. The members of the group, each of whom has a difficult life story, are optimistic and special people who are passionate about life are giving us a gift and it is important to hear from them what guides them in life today. It is important to note that the Friends of Zion museum works a lot on behalf of Holocaust survivors in Israel and around the world, and the exhibition is another step in this activity."

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The number of Holocaust survivors living in Israel stands at nearly 150,000, according to statistics published on Sunday by the Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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The 147,199 Holocaust survivors residing in the Jewish state include 521 new immigrants from war-torn Ukraine who last year were recognized as survivors of the Nazi genocide.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual event in Israel commemorating the six million Jews murdered by the Germans and their collaborators, and those who fought back and partook in rescue efforts, takes place this year from Monday evening until the following evening. The somber day features a two-minute siren at 10 a.m. local time when the country comes to a standstill.

One of the central themes of this year's commemoration is Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, as the world marks 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

According to data, 1,161 of the 147,199 Holocaust survivors are over the age of 100. Around 31,000 are more than 90 years old. The average age of survivors is 85, with the oldest being 118 years of age and the youngest – 76.

Haifa is home to the largest population of Shoah survivors in Israel, followed by Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Some 63% of Holocaust survivors in Israel were born in Europe. Significant numbers of Holocaust survivors came from outside of Europe, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Iraq.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Israel will begin observing the Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday evening with a state ceremony at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog are scheduled to speak at the event. In light of the weekly mass protests against the judicial reform, Yad Vashem is also preparing for the possibility of protesters disrupting the event. On Tuesday, the International March of the Living will take place in Poland, with thousands expected to attend and walk between the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

The event is marking its 35th anniversary this year and will be held in full format for the first time in three years due to the coronavirus pandemic. Delegations from 25 countries are expected to attend as well as the grandchildren of the fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization.

The march will be led by 42 Holocaust survivors from Israel and elsewhere as well as senior Israeli politicians and officials. For the first time, a torch will also be lit in memory of North African Jews who were also persecuted by the Nazi regime.

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A far-right Italian politician, notorious for his anti-vax sentiments, has sparked outrage after referring to lifetime senator and Holocaust survivor Lilliana Segre by the number the Nazis inked on her arm at Auschwitz concentration camp.

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"All that was missing [in the vaccine debate] was her... 75190," Fabio Meroni, a lawmaker for the right-wing Lega Nord party from northern Lombardy, said on his Facebook page.

The post was finally removed from the site after other politicians from centre-left party Partito Democratico demanded an urgent apology to the nonagenarian who was taken and transported to Nazi death camp Auschwitz from Milan at the age of 13.

"The vulgar considerations of those who like councilor Fabio Meroni equate vaccinations with Nazi fascism offend all people with historical awareness and a sense of humanity," they said in their statement.

Meroni first appeared unfazed by the backlash and continued to express dissatisfaction with Segre's claim that vaccines were "the only way out of the pandemic," adding that "she is not a doctor" and that he referred to her by "that number instead of her name to avoid getting banned from Facebook."

As the scandal escalated, however, Meroni then offered a formal apology to Segre, stating that "in this climate of hatred, unfortunately, I too got involved and I tried to express my thoughts in a totally wrong way."

Walker Meghnagi, president of Milan's Jewish community, called his attack "intolerable" for a public figure to use such "vile" terms "for those who have suffered the horror of the racial laws on their own skin."

Meghnagi was not the only one, however, as the most severe rebuke of Meroni's comments came from Roberto Cenati, president of the Milan branch of ANPI, the National Association of Italian Partisans.

"Meroni used the same language with which the Nazis negated the personality of those who ended up in the Auschwitz extermination camp for the sole fault of being born," Cenati said.

This is not the first time antisemitic attacks towards Lilliana Segre have made the news, as she was placed under police protection last year after receiving a flood of abuse, including death threats, as a consequence of her call to a parliamentary committee to study and battle all forms of antisemitism, racism, incitement to hatred, and ethnically and religiously motivated violence.

Segre was appointed a senator for life in 2018 by President Sergio Mattarella, honoring her years of speaking out and spreading the truth regarding the Holocaust's atrocities.

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Yitzhak Arad, a Holocaust survivor and scholar who was the director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for more than two decades, has died at the age of 94, the center said Thursday.

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Arad served as chairman of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993 and remained involved in the center until his final days, serving as the vice-chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, it said.

He was born Yitzhak Rudnicki in 1926 in a town that was then in Poland and is now part of Lithuania.

His parents were among the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. He managed to escape and joined the Soviet partisans in 1943, at the age of 16. He remained with them until the end of the war, fighting the Nazis in Belarus and Lithuania.

He emigrated to Israel in 1945 and served in the Israeli military, mainly in an armored brigade. He went on to become a widely published scholar of World War II and the Holocaust, lecturing at Tel Aviv University and as a guest professor at Yeshiva University in New York.

In 2004, he was awarded Yad Vashem's annual Buchman Memorial Prize for his book, The History of the Holocaust: Soviet Union and the Annexed Territories. His 2009 book, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, won the National Jewish Book Award.

"What happened in the past could potentially happen again, to any people, at any time," Arad said while working on a photography project at Yad Vashem last year.

"Be very clear about this: Do not count yourselves among the murderers, and may you never find yourselves among the victims," he said.

Ronen Plot, the acting chairman of Yad Vashem, said Arad "belongs to a vanishing generation, a generation of survivors, partisans, IDF fighters, memorial fighters."

"Every farewell to a Holocaust survivor is a reminder to us that now the work of remembrance rests on our shoulders even more," he said.

Arad is survived by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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Hundreds of Holocaust survivors in Austria and Slovakia were poised to get their first coronavirus vaccination Wednesday, acknowledging their past suffering with a special tribute 76 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, where the Nazis killed more than 1 million Jews and others.

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"We owe this to them," said Erika Jakubovits, the Jewish Community of Vienna organizer of the vaccination drive. "They have suffered so much trauma and have felt even more insecure during this pandemic."

More than 400 Austrian survivors, most in their 80s or 90s, were expected to get their first coronavirus shot at Vienna's largest vaccination center set up in the Austrian capital's convention center. Some were being brought by shuttle or by ambulance, while others were being brought in by their children. The fittest among them were even planning on taking the subway.

Jakubovits organized the vaccination drive with the support from the Austrian Health Ministry and Vienna city officials. Twelve doctors, all members of the Viennese Jewish community, volunteered to vaccinate the survivors.

Though organized to take place on what is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, vaccinations were not just being offered to survivors of the Shoah, but also all other Jews in the area older than 85.

Some survivors from Vienna's 8,000-person strong Jewish community already received the vaccination in December, when residents of the community's Jewish nursing home were vaccinated, Jakubovits said.

More broadly, a majority of elderly Austrians living in nursing homes have already received the first shot of a vaccine against COVID-19, the Austrian news agency APA reported.

Earlier this week, the president of the European Jewish Congress, or EJC, called on all countries in the European Union to ensure that Holocaust survivors have access to coronavirus vaccines as quickly as possible.

The EJC estimates that today only about 20,000 Holocaust survivors still live in the European Union.

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"Throughout their lives, they have shown mighty strength of spirit, but in the current crisis, many have sadly died alone and in pain, or are now fighting for their lives, and many others are suffering from extreme isolation," said Moshe Kantor, the head of the EJC. "We have a duty to survivors, to ensure that they are able to live their last years in dignity, without fear, and in the company of their loved ones."

Vaccination efforts across the EU's 27 nations have been off to a slow start with not enough doses available, leading to wide criticism of officials.

In a similar project to that in Vienna, the Jewish community of Bratislava in Slovakia was also to vaccinate survivors on Wednesday.

"We're very, very grateful that the vaccinations are taking place on this symbolic day," said Tomas Stern, the head of the Jewish community in Bratislava.

Some 128 survivors were to receive their first shot at Bratislava's Jewish community center on Wednesday and another 330 across the country in the coming days.

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A week into Israel's coronavirus vaccination campaign and hours before a third nationwide lockdown is due to take effect, the third wave of the virus is still sweeping over the country.

The Health Ministry reported Sunday that the 64,662 COVID tests administered in the last 24 hours yielded 2,630 positive results, or 4.1% of the tests processed.

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There were 35,525 active or symptomatic COVID patients in Israel as of Sunday, 1,054 of whom were being treated in hospitals.

Of the hospitalized patients, 160 were listed in critical condition and another 584 were listed in seriously condition. There were 133 patients on ventilators and another 178 hospitalized patients listed in moderate condition.

There were 2,861 medical workers in quarantine, including 411 doctors and 768 nurses.

The death toll from COVID in Israel stood at 3,210.

On Friday, Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer reported that hundreds of Holocaust survivors had arrived to be vaccinated without appointments after an organization that coordinates medical care for survivors reached out to Sheba.

Sheba staff also vaccinated survivors' caregivers to reduce the risk of exposing the elderly to the virus.

Director of Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv and former coronavirus coordinator Professor Ronni Gamzu said that his hospital was providing thousands of vaccinations a day and had free slots open.

"I invite people age 60 and over to make an appointment and be vaccinated here," Gamzu said.

Wolfson Medical Center in Holon has coordinated with municipal authorities to administer vaccinations around the clock from Monday to Wednesday this week. Holon residents age 70 and over can make appointments starting Sunday.

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