Numerous agencies provide home health care to senior citizens who are in need of a helping hand, clinical services or other forms of assistance, but there is one particular demographic whose unique needs put them in a completely different category: Holocaust survivors.
According to statistics published by the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, as of 2013 more than half of New York City’s estimated 64,810 Holocaust survivors lived in Brooklyn. While many have clinical issues and may be receiving assistance from Medicaid, others simply need help with day-to-day tasks. However, given their difficult pasts, survivors are often uncomfortable having strangers in their home and typically exhibit signs of greater anxiety than others in their age group.
“Most Holocaust survivors don’t want help,” Mutty Burstein, education outreach manager of the patient relations department at Americare CSS, told The Jewish Press. “They feel that they survived until now so they can manage on their own. Their children are often the ones who suffer; they end up doing the caretaking and, as part of the sandwich generation, they have kids of their own, their kids are having kids of their own and they don’t have time to go to their parents every day, do the laundry, shop and supervise the housekeeper.”
In the summer of 2011, Rabbi Moshe Wiener, executive director of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Coney Island, approached Burstein about partnering in a special program for Holocaust survivors. The JCC already had a Holocaust survivor program in place and was looking to work with an existing home care agency to offer services to an even greater number of clients.
“The JCC has been providing home care to the general population and Holocaust survivors since 1981,” said Rabbi Wiener. “Because we were providing services to such a large number of survivors, we were in touch with the Claims Conference and established a relationship. In recent years there have been special allocations from the German government which gave us the ability to expand our services.”
That expansion brought with it a need for a higher level of supervision and professionalism and the JCC reached out to several agencies, including Americare.
“We contacted Americare because of their excellent reputation, knowing that their CEO had a special interest in Holocaust education and the survivor population,” said Rabbi Wiener. “I explained that we have the resources available and if they have clients who are self paid and victims of Nazi persecution, they should refer them to us for assistance.”
Services provided by Americare’s Holocaust Survivor Home Care Program, the largest agency to partner with the JCC, include up to 25 hours of aid each week for: shopping, cleaning, laundry, free taxi service anywhere in New York City for medical appointments, and home-delivered hot food as well as coordination with partner programs for hearing aids and dental care.
“I knew it was a great idea, a win-win situation for everyone,” said Burstein.
Burstein went to work recruiting eligible seniors for the program, which has certain financial requirements but is otherwise open to anyone who was displaced from their home in Europe during the wartime years.
“Originally we thought that getting 25 people would be an ambitious undertaking,” recalled Burstein. “But we got 50, 75, then 100. These seniors have a network of their own and once word got out, they were all telling each other about it.”
