When Lee Seeman saw the site of the old Jewish Cemetery on the outskirts of Riga, Latvia eight years ago, the only thing that denoted the burial ground was a stone bearing a Star of David.
The Town of North Hempstead councilwoman was immediately motivated to create a memorial in place of the gravestones destroyed by Nazi occupiers of the town in 1942. The Nazis had not only desecrated the graveyard that dated back to 1725, but used the site as a mass grave for 1,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto who had been executed.
Seeman, who was appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad by President Bill Clinton in 1995, has made the restoration of Jewish cemeteries destroyed during World War II a priority.
The objective, she said, is “to remember these people who lived and worked and struggled and died” in Latvia and other European locales.
At the dedication of the Riga monument, a stone scroll explaining the history of the old Jewish cemetery, Seeman said, “They belong to us, our Jewish brethren, who disappeared without any record that they had even lived here.”
For the 81-year-old Seeman, who lives in Great Neck Estates, it was the latest effort to memorialize the anonymous Jewish dead in an emotional journey of remembrance for those who perished in the era of Nazi brutality.
Her mission is informed by her own Jewish heritage and the family history of her husband, Murray, who lost 30 to 40 uncles, aunts and cousins in Czechoslovakia during the war.
She said she is already working on her next project, assembling gravestones that lie scattered on a hill in Serock, Poland.
“I went to look and there were 30 stones lying on a hill,” Seeman said. “If we don’t do something, it’s going to disintegrate.”
U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman first told her about Serock – where his grandparents and late mother had lived – after one of his uncles visited there 10 years ago and told him about the gravestones he had seen there.
In Serock, Seeman said, the gravestones will be embedded in a cement wall where the site of the cemetery had been. She is also contemplating a similar project in Vilna, Estonia.
The first project she undertook was in Wyszkow, Poland, where Jewish gravestones had been removed from the cemetery and used as the foundation for a barn and to shore up a river bank.
“People there hadn’t seen a Jew in 50 years,” she recalled.
The Wyszkow memorial, an 80-foot monument surrounded by 250 headstones, was completed in 1997. Seeman vividly recalls the dedication ceremony that included 32 people from Israel whose forebears had lived in Wyszkow and a cantor who sang Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
“I’m so fortunate that I could have been involved in something like that in my lifetime,” she said.
Seeman travels to the disparate European locations she visits at her own expense and writes personal letters to solicit funds for the projects she helps to sponsor in her role with the heritage commission.
After the Wyszkow project, she helped in an effort to build a memorial to Jews who were held in slave labor camps in the forests of Estonia. When the monument was dedicated in Klooga, Estonia in 2005, Seeman spoke at the dedication, which was attended by Estonia’s president, Arnold Ruutel.
Before last Tuesday night’s town board meeting, Seeman made a brief presentation about the Riga memorial and showed a 15-minute video of the occasion.
“They lie in nameless graves in far off fields. We take them into our hearts along with our own loved ones,” she said in a visibly emotional moment after the screening.
Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman commended Seeman for her work in honoring those who perished under Nazi rule.
“You have given them their names back,” Kaiman said.
Seeman has been on the town board since 2005, representing North New Hyde Park, Garden City Park, Floral Park and the villages of Saddle Rock, Great Neck Estates, Russel Gardens, University Gardens, Lake Success and other unincorporated areas.
