Serving thousands of Holocaust Survivors across New York City
Thursday, April 20, 2017
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Full 2hr Video - Met Council Holocaust Survivor Program Boro Park Pre-Chanukah Event
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Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
An interview with our program director
An interview with Judah Zellermaier, LCSW - Met Council Holocaust Survivor Program Manager
By Ademola Bello
1. What is the Met
Council Holocaust Survivor Program and how long have you been in charge as the
program manager?
The Met Council Holocaust Survivor
Program is a multi-faceted program that assists Holocaust Survivors with
services such as emergency financial assistance, kosher food package delivery
to their home, holistic case management, short-term counseling and social
events. The goal of the program is to provide holistic services to Holocaust
Survivors in a patient-centered trauma-informed way. This means to be able to
assess the client and to provide them with wraparound services in a manner that
is sensitive to the trauma that they have experienced in their life. Our
program has many funding sources such as through a federal grant by the Jewish
Federations of North America, the NYC Council Holocaust Survivor Initiative,
the UJA, the Claims Conference and other funders. I have been in charge of the Holocaust
Survivor Program since it started in May of 2016.
2. What are your job
responsibilities as the program manager?
As Program Manager of the Holocaust
Survivor Program I oversee a team of licensed social workers and a case worker.
My responsibilities include working with my team on client outreach and
engagement through the many services our program provides. My responsibilities
also include interfacing with our many JCCs and with many social service and
governmental agencies and on collecting data and reporting on our work and on
the accomplishments and efficacy of our program. I am happy to report that we
are doing well helping many, many people.
3. How many Holocaust
Survivors benefit from Met Council Services?
In the short time since this
program has started we have been able to interact with over 2,000 Holocaust
Survivors, providing them with emergency financial assistance, case management
services, kosher food package delivery to their home, short-term counseling and
with social events. That is an amazing amount of lives that we have been able
to touch in such a short amount of time.
4. What are the
socialization programs you provide for elderly Holocaust Survivors?
We have been so fortunate to be
able to do so many exciting things for our Survivors. Events that we have done
in the past include, beautifully prepared hot meat meals, showing Yiddish
films, live Klezmer concerts, trips to museums and to Broadway shows. We’ve put
on events featuring some of Jewish Music’s biggest superstars, such as, Lipa
Schmeltzer, Shloime Dachs, the Shelly Lang Orchestra, Zisl Slepovich and
Russian superstar accordionist Yuri Lemeshev. Just recently we flew here to New
York a photography professor from Cypress College in California, a child of
Holocaust survivors himself, to photograph many of our Survivors in their home.
This was an amazing three-day event with over a thousand photographs taken of
the Survivors. This photography event will culminate with an amazing
photo-gallery event for our Survivors in the upcoming fall season.
5. In what ways do you
work with social workers to connect them with your clients and to provide
customized care for survivors who have been traumatized through their
experiences during the Holocaust?
As mentioned before, with our
program a tremendous emphasis is put on providing services to our clients in a
patient-centered trauma-informed way – being sensitive to the trauma that our
clients have experienced in the past during the Holocaust. The focus of our
program is to help our clients in a way that we are being especially sensitive
to their trauma and how, asking for, or taking help, may make them feel and how
this may play into their past trauma. Our workers receive special training on
how to work with this unique population and to help them feel safe and
dignified while providing them with services.
6. Can you discuss Met
Council’s partnership with the JCCs in providing assistance for Holocaust Survivors?
The Met Council Holocaust Survivor
Program has social workers stationed within some of our JCCs and works very
closely with all of our JCCs. For many of our clients the JCCs are their main
connection to services. Since our JCCs are centrally located within the
communities we serve, many of our clients will visit the local JCC to get the
help they need. Our in-house social workers at the JCCs can immediately work
with the client on the spot or the JCC staff can refer the client to us to help
them directly with their needs.
7. Do you conduct home
visits with your clients? And what was your experience with them?
Our program is able to provide home
visits to our Survivors to provide them with specific services or to just
provide them with friendly home visits. As mentioned earlier, the program also
has social workers stationed at our local JCCs to provide services to our
Holocaust Survivors. This way we are able to serve our Survivors where they are
at – in their homes and in their community. An added bonus with the home visits
is that we are able to do an assessment of the Survivor’s living condition and
to determine with them what services to put in place to help them best. We have
had so many positive experiences from our home visits with the Survivors.
People who are mostly home-bound and don’t usually get to spend time with other
people are able to spend time with the program workers and are able to have
them help them with the things they need.
8. What is the Fourth
Week Initiative and what are the benefits Holocaust Survivors derive from it?
The Fourth Week Initiative is an
amazing program that brings fresh kosher food packages delivered right to the door
of our survivors. This program is funded by a grant from the New York City
Council. The goal of this program is to provide fresh kosher food package
delivery to the homes of our Holocaust Survivors that receive food stamps and
cannot afford to purchase food for the entire month – hence the name. This is
an indispensable program for our Survivors that are living with a very fixed
budget and cannot afford the expense of purchasing food for the entire month.
Since the food is delivered to the door of the Survivor it is especially
helpful for people who have difficulty getting out of their home to do their
food shopping.
9. What is the
satisfaction you get from helping your clients?
Being that all four of my
grandparents were Holocaust Survivors, this is a population that is very near
and dear to me. I get tremendous satisfaction knowing that I am able to help
out our Survivors in so many ways and to be able to help put a smile on their
face. Our Survivors have gone through so much in their life and deserve to be
able to spend their remaining days with dignity and peace of mind.
10. What are some of
the innovative programs you have in future for the Met Council Holocaust
Survivor Program?
At the Met Council Holocaust
Survivor Program we are always doing new and exciting things. The program has plans
for many new and innovative programs for our survivors. One of the ideas we are
working on for the very near future is a special live Yiddish-language comedy
performance for our Holocaust Survivors by the famous Yiddish Theater
Folksbiene. This performance will be held right in the neighborhood where the
Survivors live so that even the people who have difficulty traveling will be
able to enjoy the performance. Another wonderful event that we are working on
is a challah-baking class where our survivors will get to prepare their own
challah dough and then bake the challah and take it home with them. We are also
working on an event centered around pottery painting where the Survivors will
paint their own pottery and then once glazed and fired it will be sent to their
home for them to use. We will be continuing with our local hot lunches, our
Broadway shows and museum trips. We have so much more in store for our
Survivors to enjoy in the coming time.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017
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