Diana Albert said on Sunday that she spent most her childhood trying to forget her memories of the Holocaust.
But Albert, a resident of the Floral Park-based North Shore Towers, said forgetting wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be.
“The more I tried to remove myself from it, the more I heard about it,” Albert said at a speech at Temple Israel of Great Neck.
Albert now uses her memory to teach young Jewish people about the events of the Holocaust, according to her son David Albert.
“She’s always felt it very important to tell her story,” David Albert said.
Diana Albert’s speech at Temple Israel was held on the day Jewish people around the world remember the events of the Holocaust, known as Shoah.
David Albert, a member of the congregation, said many people were familiar with his mother’s story and asked for her to speak about her experience.
Rabbi Howard Stecker, leader of the Temple Israel congregation, said that “memory for a Jew” is much more important than recalling something that happened in the past.
“It’s a way that we can face the present differently than we might otherwise,” he said.
Stecker said the temple puts together a Shoah remembrance ceremony every year, which is coordinated by its Shoah Remembrance Committee.
Albert, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust, told members of the congregation that she hid in a Jewish cemetery in the town of Serock, Poland at the age of seven to escape persecution from the Nazi soldiers.
Albert said in her speech that the Germans later desecrated the cemetery, using the tombstones to pave the city’s sidewalk and turning it into a public park.
Albert’s niece brought these events to the attention of Town of North Hempstead Councilwoman Lee Seeman, who is a member of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, which is charged with preserving locations in Europe.
Seeman was appointed to the commission by President Bill Clinton and reappointed by President George W. Bush.
Seeman, along with former Congressman Gary Ackermann, worked to raise funds to create a memorial to those who died during the Holocaust in Serock. The memorial will consist of the tombstones, with a plaque commemorating the dead in the middle.
Seeman, Ackermann and the Albert family, will visit the small Polish town in August to unveil the memorial site.
“I’m so honored to be a part of this,” Seeman said. “I can’t wait for August.”
Before Albert’s speech, Holocaust survivors who are members of the Temple Israel congregation were escorted down the temple’s aisle by their children, grandchildren or member’s of the temple’s school, as Stecker read the names of the survivors along with the city where they were imprisoned by Nazi soldiers.
Traditional Jewish songs were sung by the temple’s cantor Raphael Frieder, and by the Temple Israel and Gahelet children’s choir, which Stecker said was important to “connect the event to a religious service.”
“It should be integrated into Jewish literacy,” he said.
Stecker said that he was honored to hear Albert’s speech, but added that the children in the audience seemed the most interested in what she had to say.
“They were really listening to what she was saying,” Stecker said.
