Berlin – Deputy German ambassador Benedikt Haller gave NATAL, the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, a check for €50,000 (NIS 235,000) on Wednesday to provide assistance for residents of the south traumatized by the rocket fire from Gaza.
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The aid from the German government is earmarked to enable NATAL to provide psychological care to civilians – primarily children and youth – in communities near the Gaza border suffering from trauma stemming from the rocket attacks.
According to the German embassy in Tel Aviv, this is not the first time Germany has supported Natal. “With this support,” the embassy said in a statement, “the German embassy wants to express its solidarity with Israeli citizens suffering from unending attacks from the Gaza Strip.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the head of Natal, Orly Gal, during the last government meeting in Jerusalem in February and was “deeply impressed” with the organization’s work, according to the statement.
During Operation Protective Edge the 16-year-old organization worked on an emergency footing providing assistance to residents of southern Israel, including to children and their parents trying to cope with the trauma, as well as to the elderly and people with special needs.
NATAL’s Community Outreach Unit has been conducting training and creativity workshops for teaching staff, as well as managers of companies and organizations operating in southern Israel. The group’s Mobile Unit, made up of mental health professionals, has visited hundreds of homes in the south to provide psychological and emotional first aid to families and residents too afraid to leave their homes.
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
More gut-machen gelt…
As an Orthodox descendent both of German Jews lost in the Shoa and of survivors, I ask you to recognize the significance of, and the German national support for, what have been substantial reparations paid to Israel and to survivors. A German child born on the day Germany surrendered in 1945 celebrated his or her 68th birthday in on May 8th of this year.
Give it up…a little…there is too much of contemporary American “Jewishness” that revels mostly in the pain…we need to focus tosay more on the beauty.
In the 50s we heard often the old European lament Shvertz t’zein a Yid – we need to say more today Git t’zein a Yid
To #3- You meant to state “69th birthday”, and not “68th birthday”.