People with Israeli flags attend the International March of the Living at the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki

The number of living Holocaust survivors around the world fell from 220,000 to 196,600 over the course of 2025, according to newly released data.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), a nonprofit organization that negotiates and secures compensation for survivors of the Nazis’ atrocities worldwide, unveiled its latest figures on Tuesday.

Tracking survivors across more than 90 countries, the Claims Conference found that 50 percent of them live in Israel, totaling 97,600. The country with the next highest population is the United States with 31,000, representing 16 percent.

Seventeen percent of survivors live in Western Europe, with 9 percent in France (17,300 people) and 5 percent in Germany (10,700). Meanwhile, 11 percent reside in former countries of the Soviet Union. Seven percent (14,300) live in Russia, and 3 percent (5,200) live in Ukraine.

Other countries with notable populations of Holocaust survivors include Canada (4,800), Hungary (2,800), Australia (2,000), and Belarus (1,600).

The Claims Conference describes nearly all — 97 percent — of remaining Jewish Holocaust survivors as “child survivors,” those born between 1928 and 1946, now with a median age of 87. The youngest survivors are 79, while just over 1 percent of them are over 100. Thirty percent are over 90, and most — 62 percent — are female.

Social services provide for a sizable portion of the survivors with 71 percent — approximately 139,000 — currently or previously receiving support and grants administered through the Claims Conference. Through its Basic Needs Fund, the organization provides for 67,600 who are not receiving monthly pensions, and the organization delivers “targeted food security assistance to the most economically vulnerable Holocaust survivors.”

These new figures were released a week before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.

They followed new data from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust showing the number of schools in the United Kingdom memorializing the Holocaust has fallen by nearly 60 percent since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as such discussions have now been labeled “political” and “propaganda” by some pro-Palestinian advocates.

Last year, the Claims Conference released the results of an eight-country survey investigating Holocaust knowledge across the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The group found that 48 percent of those surveyed in the US could not name a single concentration camp used by the Nazi regime to imprison and murder Jews during World War II — including Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous of the Nazi camps. This figure fell to about 25 percent of those answering in the UK, France, and Romania. In Germany and Hungary, the level of ignorance reached 18 percent, while in Austria it hit 10 percent and in Poland it stood at 7 percent.

The same study found that many respondents did not know that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. The number of people who believed that 2 million or fewer Jews died reached 28 percent in Romania, 27 percent in Hungary, 24 percent in Poland, 20 percent in the UK, and 18 percent in Germany. In France, the US, and Austria, 21 percent of respondents expressed ignorance about the total death count.

A new survey released this month by the Claims Conference asked 1,000 Irish adults about their views on the Holocaust, finding that half did not know the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and that 19 percent of young people believed accounts of the mass slaughter had been “greatly exaggerated.” Among all respondents, 12 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust, a number that increased to 15 percent for younger adults. Of all adults surveyed, 8 percent said they believed the Holocaust was a myth.

Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, called this moment an “inflection point” in a statement and warned that “soon we are going to live in a world without Holocaust survivors, without a Holocaust survivor voice.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also released research results last year which showed high levels of global confusion about the historical reality of the Holocaust.

The ADL found that “20 percent of respondents worldwide have not heard about the Holocaust. Less than half (48 percent) recognize the Holocaust’s historical accuracy, which falls to 39 percent among 18- to 34-year-olds, highlighting a worrying demographic trend. Respondents younger than 35 also have elevated levels of antisemitic sentiments (50 percent), 13 percentage points higher than respondents over 50.”

The Claims conference also revealed that worries about another potential Holocaust to destroy the Jewish people were highest in the United States, where 76 percent of adults thought it could happen again.