Home OP-ED Down to a Dwindling Few Holocaust Survivors in Los Angeles

Down to a Dwindling Few Holocaust Survivors in Los Angeles

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“Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die” is the title of an opinion piece by Amos Rubin in the Jerusalem newspaper Ha’aretz arguing that the Israeli government only thinks of Holocaust survivors as a financial burden.

The 1997 Los Angeles Jewish Population Survey also found disproportionate poverty among Holocaust survivors.

As a demographer who has researched the Holocaust survivor population, I have been asked about the size of this dwindling, vulnerable community.  In 1997, I found an estimated 13,975 Holocaust survivors through the Holocaust question to household respondents on the L.A. Jewish Population Survey. Their Second Generation children numbered an estimated 37,010 persons. 

The U.S. life expectancy in 2000 of 70-year-olds was about 18 years.  Being a little more conservative, lets make that life expectancy 20 years, or that by 2020 most Holocaust survivors in LA will have passed.

Assuming that there hasn't been migration in or out of L.A. of Holocaust survivors, I estimate that there are about 4,200 Holocaust survivors living in Los Angeles currently.

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Pini Herman, Ph.D., has served as Asst. Research Professor at the USC Dept. of Geography, as an Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work, as Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, following Bruce Phillips, Ph.D., in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-led independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently Dr. Herman is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. He may be contacted at
pini00003@gmail.com