All posts tagged: resilience

Auschwitz II, Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Credit: Ian Mackenzier/Flickr/Creative Commons

Study: Holocaust survivors lived longer because they were resilient

According to a report in the Daily Mail, a study conducted by researchers with Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS) based in Tel Aviv, Israel came to a startling conclusion that Jews who survived the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, lived on average seven years longer than Jews who did not go through the Holocaust. MSH is an Israeli healthcare insurer with over two million members. The researchers studied 83,000 Jews, both male and female, born between 1911 and 1945 who were insured by the Maccabi. This included 38,000 European Jews now living in Israel who survived the Holocaust and 35,000 Jews also living in Israel who had not directly experienced the Nazi genocide. The study revealed that those who survived the Nazi death camps lived to an average age of 84.8 years compared to an average of 77.7 for those who did not directly experience the Nazi genocide. In effect, the mortality rate of those who suffered was 16% lower than those who didn’t. Ironically, the Jews who survived the holocaust tended to have more …