Jewish Social Service Agency is calling for donations to offset “critical funding shortfalls” in the Rockville-based nonprofit’s Holocaust Survivor Program.

The nearly 20-year-old program provided basic “safety net” services for 225 Holocaust survivors last year. Such services include personal in-home care and housekeeping, health and social services and financial aid.

As aging clients increasingly rely on the program for services, funding from traditional sources such as Claims Conference grants, matching JSSA funds and aid from The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is drying up, according to the agency’s Web site.

The sagging economy also has meant a decrease in donations to the program.

“This year alone, JSSA is facing a $200,000 shortfall and we expect the deficit to grow annually for at least another 10 years,” reads a message on the program’s Web page. “Without additional support from generous donors, our ability to provide safety net services for impoverished Holocaust survivors in our midst is in peril.”

The program grew by 40 survivors in 2011, even as need for such assistance outpaced available funding, according to JSSA.

"We have funding that is declining and is finite," program coordinator Ellen Blalock said in a recent article in Washington Jewish Week. "Our caseload is growing with people who are sicker and who are more frail."

The Washington Jewish Week article profiled two of the program’s clients: Iosif and Bella Fikhman, Rockville residents who fled their homes in Russia as the German army approached during World War II.

Click here to read the full story.

For more information, or to donate to JSSA’s Holocaust Survivor Program, click here or on the PDF above.

         JSSA's Holocaust Survivor Program By the Numbers

        Source: Jewish Social Service Agency.