60 Seconds for Amigour Residents to Descend 13 Flights of Stairs

A damaged home

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been attacked by more than 19,000 rockets from Gaza and Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Israelis are still displaced due to the rocket threats, and many more are living on edge, ready to run to a safe room or shelter at any given moment. These include Holocaust survivors and other frail older adults in Amigour affordable housing complexes for low-income seniors. Many of these facilities were built decades ago, when Israel’s security needs required each building to only include a small communal shelter in the basement.

Today, these shelters are inadequate. Simply put, when an air raid siren alarms, there is not enough time for hundreds of people to make their way to the shelter, especially the frail elderly.

We urgently need to construct new Safe Rooms in 8 Amigour facilities for the elderly.

We need to ensure that the thousands of older adults whom we house near Israel’s northern and southern borders do not become the terror victims of tomorrow. For their safety and dignity, Amigour, a subsidiary of The Jewish Agency, is in the process of major upgrades to its security infrastructure, including the creation of new safe rooms needed during air raids. These will include—depending on the structure of each facility and the residents’ needs—either:

·  The creation of “safe rooms” in each apartment, so that each person has their own space that is reinforced against rocket attacks, or

·  Larger reinforced rooms on each floor, to serve all residents on that level.

Safe rooms in apartments also function as bedrooms and the larger reinforced rooms on each floor can also serve as multi-purpose rooms conducive to building community.

Ivolia in her Amigour apartment

Ivolia Tzitron miraculously survived Auschwitz but lost her parents in the Holocaust. Today, she resides at Amigour’s Home for the Elderly in Be’er Sheva. The current barrage of rockets conjures up traumatic childhood memories for her. When the air raid siren alarms, Ivolia has only 60 seconds to reach the bomb shelter on the ground floor – an unfeasible task. Residents like Ivolia require easy access to shelters to ensure they never endure the fates of the families they lost.

Your gift will help ensure that Ivolia, and other frail older adults like her, can live safely in their Amigour apartments—able to reach a protected room quickly in the event of a terror attack.