‘We owe this to them’: Shoah survivors in vaccine spotlight
Clinic a nod to suffering, resilience of those freed from Nazi death camps
VIENNA — Hundreds of Holocaust survivors in Austria and Slovakia got their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine Wednesday, an acknowledgement of past suffering and a tribute to resilience 76 years after Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
More than 400 Austrian survivors, most in their 80s or 90s, were expected to get shots at the convention centre in Vienna. Some were brought by shuttle or by ambulance, while others were accompanied by their children. The fittest among them took the subway.
“We owe this to them,” said Erika Jakubovits, who organized the capital vaccination drive for the Jewish Community of Vienna. “They have suffered so much trauma and have felt even more insecure during this pandemic.”
Jakubovits set up the vaccination drive with support from the Austrian Health Ministry and Vienna city officials. Twelve doctors, all members of the Viennese Jewish community, volunteered to administer shots to older Jews.
While the event took place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, vaccinations were not limited to survivors of the Shoah. All Jews in the area older than 85 were eligible to receive them during the tribute drive. Some of the 8,000 members of Vienna’s Jewish community were vaccinated in December, when residents of a Jewish nursing home got their first doses, Jakubovits said.
Over the past month, a majority of the elderly Austrians living in nursing homes have received the first dose of a vaccine against COVID-19, Austrian news agency APA reported.
Earlier this week, the president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) called on all countries in the European Union to ensure that Holocaust survivors have access to coronavirus vaccines as quickly as possible. More than six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Third Reich. The EJC estimates that today only about 20,000 Holocaust survivors still live in the European Union.
“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,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said.