Gunter Hiller, 90, attends Cafe Europa. (Photos by Samantha Swindler/Staff)

Among the more than 100 Holocaust survivors living in the Portland area today is an elderly woman who desperately needs dental care.

"This lady had her teeth pulled out in the war," said Kerry Goldring, development manager for Jewish Family & Child Service. "That was how she was tortured. They pulled her teeth out. And now in her 80s she has horrendous dental issues, and you can just imagine the level of trauma that it invokes in her every time she has to go to the dentist."

Dental work isn't covered by her Medicare insurance. In past years, the woman could have applied for assistance from an emergency aid fund for Holocaust survivors, but Jewish Family & Child Service recently learned it's losing that grant of money. They've now launched a campaign to raise $10,000 to replenish the fund by June 30.

"She's in pain, it's already emotionally traumatic and she can’t afford it," Goldring said. "And she turns to us, and we're like 'our funding has been cut.'

"Obviously, we're going to raise it."

Obviously, Portland, we've got to help.

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Jane Schindler, whose late husband was Holocaust survivor and author Menachem "Manny" Taiblum, attends Cafe Europa.

Jewish Family & Child Service provides a range of programs to the Jewish and broader community, but their Holocaust survivor outreach is perhaps their most unique work. The nonprofit is the only agency in Oregon authorized through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, known as the Claims Conference, to help survivors receive reparations and care assistance from the German government.

Part of that outreach includes monthly social gatherings for Holocaust survivors called Café Europa, named in honor of a restaurant in Sweden where Jews gathered after the war hoping to learn the fate of loved ones.

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Yelena Benikov serves cheesecake during a Cafe Europa gathering on May 24, 2018.

These days, survivors generally talk about anything but the war years. On Thursday, about 20 survivors and their partners gathered for a Café Europa garden party at a private home in Southwest Portland. The conversations centered around their health, their children and, always, the current situation in Israel.

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Anneke Bloomfield, who lived in hiding as a child when Nazis occupied the Netherlands, attends a Cafe Europa gathering.

Anneke Bloomfield, 83, has been coming to Café Europa meetings since they began in Portland in 2001.

“We’re mostly old Europeans, and it’s fun,” Bloomfield said. “We have coffee and sometimes we have entertainment. Sometimes we have a speaker. One time we baked challah (bread) together.”

Bloomfield was a child when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and her father sent her and her siblings into hiding with gentile families.

“My father split us up because he figured if we were all split up they would only catch one of us at a time,” she said.

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Jane Schindler, center, speaks with Jerry Paster and Anneke Bloomfield.

Bloomfield is a volunteer speaker with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. Over the past 18 years, she estimates she's spoken at more than 300 schools, libraries and churches across Oregon and southern Washington.

I asked if she enjoyed sharing her story.

“No, no,” she said. “It’s just something that I think the students ought to know about.”

She can give no more than one talk a week, she said, before getting overwhelmed.

“I don’t sleep well,” Bloomfield said. “I don’t eat until it’s over with.”

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Mark Atlas attends a Cafe Europa gathering.

Portland’s Jewish Family & Child Service has provided services to survivors since 1947 and has received Claims Conference grants for victims since 2010. The process of applying for assistance is complicated, and numerous pots of money are available based on a survivor’s experience.

“It depends on many things,” Goldring said. “It depends on what year you were born. Were you in a ghetto or were you in a concentration camp? Were you in a labor camp? How long were you there? How old were you when you were there? Maybe you didn’t go to a camp at all but you ended up in Siberia pretending that you’re not Jewish.”

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Eve Levy, whose four grandparents were Jewish Holocaust survivors, speaks at a Cafe Europa gathering May 24, 2018.

The process of verifying someone as a Nazi victim can take up to two years, which means time is running out to identify survivors who haven’t yet registered for reparations. Half of Jewish Family & Child Service’s more than 100 survivor clients are between the ages of 81 and 90. The youngest is 74; the oldest, 96.

Many are Russian survivors who were resettled by Jewish Family & Child Service from the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s.

“When people ask me how many survivors there are in Portland, I say it’s a mystery because we are constantly finding survivors who we didn’t know existed,” Goldring said. “We just haven’t got the outreach really down pat so they know about us and we know about them.”

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Gunter Hiller, 90, made the cheesecake for the Cafe Europa gathering.

Last year, Portland-area survivors received 14,350 hours of homecare services. Among them, 90-year-old Gunter Hiller, who receives weekly help with transportation, cleaning and shopping.

Hiller made a cheesecake for Thursday’s garden party, in celebration of Shavuot, the Jewish holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Hiller’s secret ingredient is a touch of Grand Marnier liqueur, but he laughs and says, “Cheesecake is the antithesis of what we should be talking about.”

The conversation turned more serious.

“As a Holocaust survivor, I’m very concerned about the world I’m living in now,” he said.

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Attendees of Cafe Europa received gifts of flowers and fruit.

Hiller was born in Berlin in 1928. His family tried to flee in 1938, but they were denied visas from the United States and Switzerland.

They made it to Amsterdam, but both his parents were killed by the Nazis.

“It wasn’t just Hitler, it was the whole world that made (the Holocaust) possible,” Hiller said. “And still we haven’t learned.”

Hiller was recently fitted for new hearing aids – the kind of purchase helped by the Jewish Family & Child Service emergency aid fund.

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Tina Genesina and Vera Goldman attend a Cafe Europa gathering on Thursday, May 24, 2018.

The nonprofit is seeking to raise just $10,000 to make sure the needs of local survivors can be met. It’s a small amount to meet humble requests.

Hearing aids.

Dental care.

A window air conditioner for the summer months.

Tax-deductible donations to the Holocaust survivors emergency aid fund can be made online at: http://jfcs-portland.org/services/holocaust-survivor-services/

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A Cafe Europa garden party for Portland area Holocaust survivors was held at a private home in Southwest Portland.

If you can't give monetarily, Jewish Family & Child Service is also looking for volunteers to provide companionship to Holocaust survivors who have limited opportunities for socialization. Many survivors speak Russian. For more information on how to help, call 503-226-7079, or email info@jfcs-portland.org.