One survivor who got her vaccine, Eva Rose, 96, said the last year has been “lousy,” but added: “I am still here, thank God.”

By Liam Stack

A year spent hiding at home from the coronavirus has given Anne Bertolino, 96, a lot of time to dwell on the past: the anti-Semitic abuse she suffered on the streets of Hamburg as a child; the grandparents who pushed for her and her sister to leave the country for their own safety; and her mother, a widow who was killed in Auschwitz.

She has ached to return to a more normal life, when she socialized at a senior center instead of sitting in her apartment in Queens and watching old episodes of The Jack Benny Program and home makeover shows whose names she never learned.

“I am alone all the time so I have been thinking about the past a lot,” she said. “Unfortunately, I can’t forget anything. It drives me crazy.”

As millions of New Yorkers have gotten vaccinated and have begun to enjoy a taste of life after the pandemic, many like Ms. Bertolino have remained stuck at home. Wheelchair-bound and with her eyesight fading, Ms. Bertolino considered vaccine appointments unattainable, hidden behind an impenetrable tangle of websites.

Despite having been eligible for vaccination since January, only 42 percent of New Yorkers 85 and older have been fully vaccinated, according to recent city data, which has jolted community groups into action. For Jewish organizations, the fact that this age group includes many Holocaust survivors — some of their community’s most vulnerable and treasured members — has created an all-hands-on-deck emergency.

“The survivors serve a tremendous role in the community, more than I think a lot of them may realize,” said Avi Greenstein, the chief executive of the Boro Park Jewish Community Center, which has helped over 750 survivors get vaccinated in recent weeks.

He added: “The community looks at them and can say, ‘Wow, these people and their perseverance, this is the reason we are still around.’”

There are roughly 350,000 Holocaust survivors alive today, Jewish groups say, and New York City is home to one of the largest concentrations of them in the world. About 20,000 live in the five boroughs, 80 percent of those in Brooklyn, with an estimated 15,000 living in the suburbs, according to community leaders.

By now, all Holocaust survivors are over the age of 75, and many live in financial hardship. Forty percent of survivors in the New York area live below the poverty line, according to Eric S. Goldstein, the chief executive of the UJA-Federation of New York.

It is one of several organizations that provide support services to Holocaust survivors, and in recent months it has helped 2,635 of them get vaccinated.

“No one is more deserving of community support than these people in their remaining years,” Mr. Goldstein said.

Ms. Bertolino finally received her first shot of the vaccine on a rainy day last week at an event for Holocaust survivors at a senior center in Flushing. She woke early to prepare for the excursion, donning pearls and a surgical mask for the occasion, and traveled across Queens in an Uber — her wheelchair in the trunk — with a home health aide.

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