On the occasion of Holocaust Heroes and Remembrance Day in Israel, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released the statistics on the number of Holocaust survivors in Israel. It also released the breakdown and total numbers of world Jewry.
There were 165,000 people recognized as Holocaust survivors living in Israel at the end of 2021. Their average age is 85 and about 19% of them (31,000) are over the age of 90. Israel has 950 survivors aged 100 or more.
The largest group at 64% of all of the survivors comes from Europe. Of these people 59,900 (36%) came from the former Soviet Union, 19,100 (12%) are from Romania, 8,900 (5.5%) are Polish, 4,500 (2.7%) are Bulgarian, 2,400 (1.5%) came from Hungary, and 2,300 are German.
Jews from the Arab world, known as Sephardim, are also counted among Holocaust survivors as many of them were in countries occupied by Germany and its allies during World War II, such as Tunisia and Morocco. As such, they suffered under anti-Semitic policies and were under threat of extermination as much as European Jewry.
Out of all of the Israeli survivors, 105,000, roughly 60%, are women who have an average age of 85.4.
There were an estimated 18 million Jews in the world on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939. Of these, 6 million were murdered. According to the CBS, at the end of 2020, the world Jewish population numbered just 15.2 million. This is a net growth of barely more than 25%, while the world as a whole has almost tripled in population since 1945.
The breakdown of the world Jewish population of 15.2 million on Holocaust Remembrance day is:
• 6.9 million Jews live in Israel
• 6.0 million Jews live in the United States
• 445,000 live in France
• 393,000 live in Canada
• 292,000 live in the United Kingdom
• 175,000 live in Argentina
• 150,000 live in Russia
• 118,000 live in Germany
• 118,000 live in Australia
The number of Jews living in Israel: 6.9 million (45% of the world Jewish population)
Of them: 5.4 million were born in Israel
1.5 million were born abroad
Of them: 1.0 million were born in Europe or in America
284,400 were born in Africa
153,700 were born in Asia
