About a third of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. live in poverty. This group helps them.

Bernard Offen knows hunger and despair. From ages 10 to 16, he survived five concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Now 92, Offen divides his time between California and Poland, where he gives tours of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and shows visitors the bunk where he slept crammed with other Jewish prisoners, the building where he was tattooed with his identification number, and the crematorium where his father’s body was burned.

More than 59 of his extended family members in Poland perished during the Holocaust, he said. Offen was determined to rebuild his life after World War II ended and he immigrated to Detroit, where he and his wife raised two sons and started a coin laundry business in 1951.

Two years ago, when John Pregulman and Amy Israel Pregulman of Denver met Offen while visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, they told him about a program they had founded for Holocaust survivors in the United States called KAVOD — a word that roughly means “dignity” in Hebrew.

The nonprofit group works with Jewish human service agencies in about 60 U.S. cities to help survivors with emergency needs such as dental care, home repairs, transportation, and groceries, said Amy Israel Pregulman.

Offen didn’t think he would ever need to reach out to KAVOD, but a few months after returning to his home in to California from Poland in 2019, he found himself unable to pay all his bills and buy food.

Although reluctant to ask for assistance, Offen contacted the Pregulmans and was put in touch with someone from a local Jewish Family Service agency who gave him several grocery gift cards paid for by KAVOD donors. The cards helped him through a few difficult months, he said.

“I’d been trudging along, doing the best that I could,” said Offen. “I’m very grateful for the help, but I honestly didn’t like to ask for it. And I still don’t.”

The idea for KAVOD came about after John Pregulman, 63, an investment banker and freelance photographer, was asked by a friend to photograph several Holocaust survivors for the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in 2012.

“It was life-changing for me, and my friend encouraged me to continue taking photographs of survivors,” he said. “He told me their biggest fear was that they’d be forgotten.”

In 2015, John Pregulman went to Orlando and ended up at a 94-year-old survivor’s house.

“When she opened her fridge, I could see this lady didn’t have much of anything,” he said. She explained that her air conditioner had broken and she had to use her money for the month to fix it. “She said, ‘I’m used to being hungry. I’ll wait until my next [Social Security] check to buy groceries,’” Pregulman recalled.

He told his wife about the woman and they arranged to get her some help. They then launched KAVOD to help Holocaust survivors whose needs often aren’t met by other agencies.

The Pregulmans found out in 2018 that one-third of 80,000 Holocaust survivors in the United States were living in poverty, according to The Blue Card Foundation, another charity that helps survivors. That’s a higher percent than the U.S. population overall — in 2017 about 12% of people aged 80 and older were living in poverty.

In 2019, KAVOD partnered with the Seed the Dream Foundation to create the KAVOD Survivors of the Holocaust Emergency Fund to reach even more recipients. More than 18,000 requests have been met.

Donations from the fund have made a difference for about 150 survivors who utilize resources from Jewish Family Service of MetroWest New Jersey, said Liz Levy, a social worker and coordinator of Holocaust services for the agency in Florham Park, N.J.

“It was frustrating when there wasn’t enough emergency funding for survivors’ needs as they aged,” said Levy. “And now KAVOD allows us to say ‘yes’ to those emergency needs so they can age with dignity.”

Judy and Alex Buchler of Rockaway, N.J., said they receive KAVOD-funded meals from Levy’s agency every two weeks, plus home-health aides to help Alex Buchler, 96.

Judy Buchler, 92, said she was forced to haul stones in a Hungarian camp when she was 15, while Alex endured pain and hardship at a munitions factory. The couple met after the war and will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on April 8, she said.

“The ultimate revenge is to live a good life,” said Judy Buchler, who has two daughters, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. “Neither of us ever thought we would live this long, so we are very fortunate.”

When she was an infant, Gertrude Gompers’ parents fled with her to Vienna to escape persecution. Her grandparents, though, perished at a camp in Czechoslovakia, said Gompers, 84. Last year, when her husband died, his pension was cut off, reducing Gompers’ income. When she learned that she needed a new hearing aid, Gompers wondered whether she could afford it. Thanks to KAVOD, Jewish Family Service bought her a hearing aid and offered to send someone over to help her with housework.

“I’ve never accepted charity or needed it in my life, but they had my back,” said Gompers. “They’re a friend when I need one and I’m very thankful.”

Amy Israel Pregulman said she couldn’t ask for a better compliment.

It’s extraordinary “to be a witness to somebody’s story,” she said. “It’s part of our responsibility as human beings to take care of our elders. I can think of no greater honor.”