Israel to vaccinate all Holocaust Survivors against Coronavirus

That no Holocaust survivor in Israel run out of COVID-19 vaccine, is the objective of a national project that helps to transport to clinical centers this aged, and in many cases handicapped, population of the country.

Like Katrina Wolfensohn, of Russian origin and 80 years old, whom the Israeli emergency service United Hatzalah picked up today from a residence in Jerusalem and approached the vaccination center to receive the first dose, injected by the health workers in the same ambulance.

The initiative has a list of more than 20,000 Israelis who have not yet been vaccinated, such as Wolfensohn, who contracted the coronavirus after an operation and had to wait the necessary time to recover, he told Efe.

With an investment of four million euros, United Hatzalá and the Jewish organization Claims Conference guarantee the transportation of this respected group, which last year lost 900 of its members due to COVID-19.

“We owe it to those who survived the greatest atrocity humanity has ever known, to provide all the care and service we can to make life a little easier for them,” said Eli Beer, president of United Hatzalá.

A medical team accompanies the ambulance that takes them to the local vaccination center, which they do not always access since they are usually treated inside the vehicle due to their mobility problems.

The organizers of this project consider that during the pandemic the health of these people has suffered, both physically and mentally.

“Giving Holocaust survivors the ability to return to their daily and social routines is of the utmost importance to us,” said Shlomo Gur, vice president of the Claims Conference in Israel.

There are 179,600 survivors in Israel, all over the age of 75. 40% arrived in 1951, during the first wave of migration, and more than a third in the last decade of the 1990s.

Israel began its vaccination campaign in December and is the most advanced in the world by percentage of population. Of 9.2 million inhabitants, almost 4.5 million have received the first dose and more than three million the second.