Amcha was founded in 1987 by a group of devoted Holocaust survivors and mental health professionals, led by the late Manfred Klafter, to overcome the limitations of services available to Holocaust survivors. Aware of the survivors’ distrust of clinical psychiatry, they decided to focus on non-material, psychosocial and largely preventive support, rather than on mental health treatment per se. The goal was to create a framework for mutual aid, memory processing and grief resolution, as well as a place where survivors and their families could feel at home and be understood.
