A tale of girl and "good" potato

"I told myself: be a potato. A potato isn't scared; it doesn't cry or yell."

It is this curious idea that saved little Hana Gofrit's life over 70 years ago. When the Nazis occupied her village of Biala Rabaska, near Poland's capital Warsaw, a villager hurriedly put the four-year-old girl inside a potato sack.

Hana decided to be a "good" potato, which does not pop out of a sack or make any noises -- she did not move, or giggle, or whisper, at all.

The Jewish child fled to Israel in 1949, where she grew up, got married and raised a family. In 2010, she lit a torch at the main memorial event in Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

Now, 78-year-old Hana would tell her tales to children across the world, sharing with them "what kept me through the war."

There are 192,000 holocaust survivors living in Israel, carrying with them the scars of those traumatic experiences.

On Monday, Israel held a ceremony to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust. The day before, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at another event that Israeli government was concerned for the survivors' well-being, noting that he had instructed the treasury to transfer funds to help the survivors.

Hana considered herself financially able, but other survivors might not be that well.

Nearly 25 percent of the survivors live in poverty, with many others facing financial difficulties. Some of them have to choose between medicine and food to make it through the month.

Ruth Krieger left Ukraine with her mother and sisters 73 years ago. They split, as local peasants could not shelter so many people at one place. Krieger hid in a village in Poland, then made it to Israel.

She never saw the rest of her family again.

Now, the 84-year-old woman found herself financially strained in an expensive society. "I try to eat from the same loaf of bread for nearly two weeks in order to save money. I try not to turn on the heating when it's cold, and I just wrap myself in many blankets in order to stay warm," she said.

In the summer of 2011, she participated in the Social Justice protests in Tel Aviv.

"They remember us only when the Memorial Day comes along, and they say nice things about how they care about us and how it is important to take care of us, but then -- it's all gone," said Krieger.

"I ask the Israeli society not to forget us. We're not that many, but we need you. We need help before it's too late for all of us," she told Xinhua.

At her Tel Aviv apartment, "Potato" Hana said that she often received letters from German children, who ask her difficult questions and apologize to her. In the reply, she would tell those children: "A person can't live with hatred because it shuts up his or her heart."

"The most important thing is that people remember what happened. We'll soon be gone and our stories must live on, so that it won't happen," said Hana.

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