Tens of thousands of elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel are living below the poverty line and relying on donations and volunteers to survive.

Key points: 45,000 Holocaust survivors living below the poverty line in Israel

45,000 Holocaust survivors living below the poverty line in Israel 80-yr-old survivor Melinda Hershkovitz says she has still not found peace after experiences

80-yr-old survivor Melinda Hershkovitz says she has still not found peace after experiences Charity group supports struggling survivors in Israel with services such as transportation and groceries

January 28 is International Holocaust Memorial Day, and commemoration ceremonies were held across Europe and the United States overnight to remember the 6 million Jews murdered by Germany's Nazi regime.

Melinda Hershkovitz, aged 84, is one of 45,000 Holocaust survivors living below the poverty line in Israel.

She lives in a rundown block of flats on the outskirts of a small town on the way to Tel Aviv.

It has been freezing cold lately and her heater has broken down.

"It's impossible to make ends meet," she said.

"I'm hoping it will get easier."

Ms Hershkovitz cannot afford to get her heater fixed.

It is only thanks to the help of a volunteer organisation the heater was repaired.

"Of course I would like more financial help so I can go out into the world and see things," Ms Hershkovitz said.

"Right now I am stuck here at home.

"Of course more money would help. But who is thinking about us?"

Melinda Hershkovitz as a little girl in Romania with her brother and mother. ( Supplied )

Ms Hershkovitz was only a little girl when she saw her father shot dead in front of her.

"My dad was killed. He was standing in line to get on the train," she said.

"All the Jews were going on the train, but they shot him right away.

"There was a woman who pushed me to the side so they didn't kill me too."

Nazi forces had just arrived in her hometown of Oradea in Romania.

The majority of the Jewish population was deported to their deaths at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"My memory of the Holocaust is it was very cold," Ms Hershkovitz said.

"We had nothing to eat."

Ms Hershkovitz has lived with these horrific memories her whole life, and even now in her mid-80s she has not found peace.

A widower with no retirement savings, she survives on a small pension and compensation payment, receiving just over $250 a week.

It has been a constant struggle to pay for rent, electricity, groceries and medicine.

"When I go shopping I'm worried I wont have enough money," she said.

"I'm afraid of all the very expensive prices.

"That's why I can't allow myself to buy everything. Everything I'm buying is on special."

Melinda Hershkovitz's block of flats in Tel Aviv. ( ABC News: Sophie McNeill )

World 'owes some kind of debt' to survivors

Volunteer-based network the Association for Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors supports thousands of people like Ms Hershkovitz across Israel.

"We actually do everything, from providing cooked food, groceries, transportation to doctors and hospital appointments," association head Tamara More said.

"They didn't have the life they could have had if they had grown up under normal conditions.

"I think the entire world owes some kind of debt to the people who survived the most horrific time in human history."

The Israeli Welfare Ministry did not answer the ABC's specific query as to why so many elderly Holocaust survivors have been struggling to survive, but said the Government had made increases on payments in recent years and that $17 million would be spent this financial year on various programs.

Ms Hershkovitz has shared her story on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

To mark the occasion, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has presented a previously unreleased letter penned by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from 1962 where he said he wasn't responsible for the mass genocide.

Ms More said there were a range of reasons why so many of the Jewish state's Holocaust survivors were not being well looked after.

"One of them is that Israel is in constant war and does not have the money to allocate to welfare as much as it should have," she said.

One of the programs run by Ms More aims to grant one last wish to Holocaust survivors.

Ms Hershkovitz's request was very modest.

"She told us that she would like once in her life to go into a supermarket and just take things and put them in her cart without calculating her pennies," Ms More said.

"She always had to buy only the very basics, and two days ago we took her to a very big supermarket.

"She could take anything, absolutely anything, from the shelves and put it in our cart without looking at the price, without calculating if she had the money or not."

For once, Ms Hershkovitz's fridge was full and she even had a new face cream.

"Tamara just did me a nice shop and this will help me for a while," she said.

"If it wasn't for her I don't know what would happen to me."