Number of Holocaust survivors down to 245,000 globally, 14,655 in New York

Less than a week before the start of World War II, the parents of 6-year-old Manny Korman and his 10-year-old brother, Gerd, made the gut-wrenching decision to send their children away, not knowing if they would ever see them again.

The family, who had been living in Hamburg, Germany, before being rounded up by the Nazis in October 1938 and taken to a camp in Poland, sent their children to live with a host family in the British countryside. That was part of the Kindertransport effort, where England agreed to harbor 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish minors during the war, Manny Korman, 92, of Great Neck, recalled in an interview this week.

In time, the family would reunite in the United States after Korman's mother was able to obtain a visa from Poland and then secured passage for her sons in September 1940. Korman's father would arrive more than six years later after Canadian forces liberated the Dutch concentration camp where he was interned during the war.

“We became a family again,” said Korman, who lost grandparents and other relatives during the systematic genocide that resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews from 1933 to 1945.

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday, some of the few remaining Long Island-based survivors detailed the importance of documenting their harrowing stories of anguish and survival, particularly in light of the rise of antisemitism that has grown across the region since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel by Hamas.

“The story of the Holocaust is another indicator for humanity to recognize how, if we don't take care in getting the right leadership, people can be treated with such disdain,” said Korman, a retired middle school principal in Queens. 

Diminished numbers of Holocaust survivors

The number of Holocaust survivors living both locally and across the globe is dwindling, according to a pair of demographics reports released this week by the Manhattan-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit with offices in Manhattan that secures funding for Holocaust survivors around the world.

The study found that approximately 245,000 Holocaust survivors are still living across more than 90 countries, with nearly half residing in Israel.

Roughly 38,400 known survivors, or 16%, live in the United States — the second most of any nation — with 14,655 in New York, the most of any state, the report said.

More than 70% of the New York Holocaust survivors live in Brooklyn and another 20% are spread out in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx or Staten Island, the Claims Conference reported.

Long Island, meanwhile, is home to just over 3% of the state's Holocaust survivors, including an estimated 400 in Nassau County and 100 in Suffolk County, the group said.

The median age of New York Holocaust survivors is 86, while almost 70% are 85 or older, the report found.

Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, estimates that within five years roughly half of the remaining Holocaust survivors will be gone.

“This is really the last chance to ensure that Holocaust survivors live a life of dignity,” said Schneider, noting that about a third of survivors live in poverty. “We have to make sure that these people, who suffered so much, live appropriately in their final days.”

Telling their stories

With a steadily declining number of Holocaust survivors, it becomes increasingly critical to memorialize their stories, whether in print, in video documentaries or through speaking engagements to young people, said Bernie Furshpan, a board member and marketing director of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove.

“It's so important that we keep their stories alive,” said Furshpan, the son of Holocaust survivors. “We need to make sure that kids won't forget that humanity can go this low; that it can descend down to this level of hell.”

On Thursday, Suffolk lawmakers and Jewish officials announced that the county's executive building will be illuminated yellow for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest death camp, was liberated by the Russian army in 1945.

“The Holocaust looms large over contemporary Jewish life,” said Rabbi Aaron Benson of the North Shore Jewish Center in Port Jefferson Station. “And Jews are experiencing today an unwanted refresher on just how much hatred there is in the world and how that hatred can take a violent and wicked turn.”

Among the remaining Long Island Holocaust survivors is Paris-born Mireille Taub, whose family secured the last train out of France before the French surrendered to the Nazis.

But their train was bombed by the Germans, forcing the family to walk to safety, and then travel by rented truck across the Pyrenees mountain range, passing through Spain and Portugal, before boarding a ship to the United States and arriving in New York in August of 1940.

Taub, 85, a retired literacy specialist from Freeport, said it is critical to share stories such as hers because of the high amount of disinformation online and in social media about the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 attacks.

“We survivors tell our truth,” she said. “So telling the story is critical to sharing an experience and creating an understanding and empathy.”

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.