Amcha Germany

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AMCHA Germany
logo
legal form registered association
founding 1988
Seat Berlin
main emphasis psychosocial help for Holocaust survivors and their descendants
Action space Israel, Germany
people Lukas Welz, chairman
Website amcha.de

Amcha Germany ( proper spelling AMCHA ) is a non-profit association based in Berlin , which supports the Israeli organization of the same name financially and ideally independently, non-partisan and non-denominational . In addition to the association, there is the Amcha Foundation Germany .

Amcha (Hebrew for: Your people) is the central organization in Israel, founded in 1987, for psychosocial, non-material and preventive help for survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants. Founded as a Jewish self-help organization, more than 16,000 people now use Amcha in Israel to help. There are 15 centers, 380 psychotherapists, gerontologists, physiotherapists and social workers are employed. Manfred Klafter was the founder.

The work of Amcha in Israel

Offers of help

Therapies

Amcha provides professional psychological, social and psychosocial help to Holocaust survivors and their descendants in 15 centers in Israel. In order to better respond to the special needs of clients, Amcha has developed special therapeutic approaches that include a variety of expressive and creative approaches and integrate social, psychological and gerontological therapies. Documenting the personal life story or the psychiatric consultation are also part of this integrative approach . The social, mental, physical and financial circumstances and possibilities of the clients are taken into account. Amcha offers individual and group therapies.

Amcha social clubs

Building on the principle of the therapeutic community , the Amcha social clubs pursue the goal of alleviating the suffering of Holocaust survivors. In addition to the comprehensive mental rehabilitation offers, clients are offered a place of community of people who share the same fate. Professional therapists as well as art, movement and relaxation teachers offer employment and rehabilitation.

home visits

With home visits, Amcha supports those clients who are tied to their home due to limited or lack of mobility. The degree of need for help varies greatly. Those clients who suffer from complex social deficits or illnesses are supported in being able to organize their everyday lives independently as long as possible. Home care by Amcha, which is also offered in hospitals, old people's homes, care wards and hospices , supplements the services of municipal organizations, which are mostly only able to meet the special needs of Holocaust survivors to a limited extent.

Clients

First generation Holocaust survivors

Survivors often suffer from the combination of post-traumatic symptoms and age-related depression and isolation. Survivors are overwhelmed with guilt, worry, nightmares and fear of imaginary dangers and real disasters. The loss of ties and long-term friends, social isolation and loneliness, withdrawal from the world of work and the lack of economic security are all the more necessary due to the post-traumatic stresses of advancing age. Post-traumatic symptoms also increase with physical aging. The number of those who need psychological and social care is growing.

Child survivors

Child survivors are those who were not older than 16 when the war ended. Child survivors experienced war and displacement at different stages of development and suffered severe damage as a result of extreme losses and privations during the long years in hiding or being separated from their families. On the other hand, child survivors have developed a variety of unusual survival strategies that are often lifelong. As child survivors get older, so too does the mental suffering. Simple changes in this phase of life trigger old associations, cause depression and a strong reaction to the significant losses during their childhood: being outcast as a child, lack of parental protection and conflicts over personal identity.

Subsequent generations

Children of the survivors unconsciously internalize the often repressed feelings of their parents in the process of transgenerational transference. They carry the burden of the Holocaust and the grief associated with it for their parents: They want to fill the void left by the murdered relatives in order to console their parents for their various losses. The children of survivors tend to have a “psychological profile” that describes a mixture of particular strengths but also strong vulnerability in stressful situations.

Amcha Germany's tasks and goals

Help for Holocaust survivors in Israel

Through the financial support for the work of Amcha Israel, the non-material, psychological, social and psychosocial help for Holocaust survivors and their descendants is supported and promoted. In addition to the foundation's activities, donations and church collections are part of the financial support.

Promotion of a lively culture of remembrance in Germany

Following the guiding principle of remembering but not forgetting the survivors , Amcha Germany combines the memory of the past with responsibility for the present and the future. The story of the Holocaust is to be conveyed and an examination of anti-Semitism and racism in Germany promoted. In addition, information should be provided about the long-term consequences of the Holocaust or topics such as the survivor syndrome .

City memberships

Through the membership of cities in Amcha Germany, a culture of remembrance is to be promoted, which locally, but across all borders, combines the memory of the crimes of National Socialism with the responsibility for thinking and acting in the present with awareness of the past. So far, the following cities have decided to become members: Eberswalde , Celle and Oranienburg . Meetings with contemporary witnesses or benefit concerts are held regularly on site . The monument project Grow-with-memory of the artist Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz about connecting the memory of during the November pogroms destroyed Eberswalde synagogue by letters donations for humanitarian aid from Amcha in Israel. The monument was inaugurated on November 9, 2013 by Federal President Joachim Gauck .

Citizens workshops

In the community workshops, committed people, young people and adults, citizens of different religions and social origins get into conversation with contemporary witnesses, psychologists, theologians and historians and discuss responsibility for the past, present and future based on the Holocaust.

Commitment to a just and sustainable German compensation policy

In cooperation with other organizations and actors, Amcha Germany strives for a fair and sustainable German policy of compensation that includes all victims of National Socialism . Against the background of the specificity of the Holocaust, Amcha Germany strives in particular to improve the living conditions of Holocaust survivors.

Support for those seeking help in Germany

Amcha Germany sees itself as a network point for people who need psychosocial, psychological and social help in Germany against the background of the long-term consequences of the Holocaust.

History of Amcha Germany

There was no compensation for psychological long-term effects for the victims of the Holocaust in either the Federal Republic of Germany or the GDR until 1990.

It was not until April 1990 that the parliamentary groups in the GDR's first freely elected parliament acknowledged shared responsibility for the German crimes. The then government of the GDR under Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière provided financial means as an expression of this commitment, which still make it possible today to support Amcha's work in Israel from the Amcha Foundation in Germany. The founder is Amcha Deutschland eV, which was established in 1990. Subsequent donations from German organizations and companies allowed the foundation's capital to be increased further. An association of friends and sponsors of Amcha eV was founded in Bonn in 1988 . Both clubs came together in 1995 under the name Amcha Deutschland eV.

Association bodies, supporters

Members of the Honorary Council

Former members of the Honorary Council

Members of the Board of Trustees

Board of Directors of the Association (since 2018)

  • Lukas Welz, chairman
  • Rouven Sperling, deputy chairman
  • Rainer Waldhauer, treasurer
  • Marina Chernivsky
  • Dr. Katja Happe

Board of Directors of the Foundation

  • Matthias Gülzow, chairman
  • Susanne Krause-Hinrichs, deputy chairwoman
  • Daniel Schüle (Managing Director Deutsche Verkehrswacht ), Treasurer

More supporters

Other supporters of Amcha in Israel and Germany were and still are: Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005), Jakob Hirsch , Giora Feidman , Jehuda Bacon . Noach Flug was chairman of AMCHA Israel.

Press reports

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief description of the association's history: Archive link ( Memento from December 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Annette Langer : Nazi Victims in Israel: Holocaust for a Lifetime. spiegel.de, January 24, 2014, accessed December 10, 2014
  3. ↑ Ralph Giordano: Israel, for God's sake, Israel. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2002, p. 283
  4. ↑ Status: 2013