Holocaust Remembrance Day at Hewlett High School

Two days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hewlett High School students received an education on the horrific historic event with several classes gathered in the building’s library to learn Mireille Taub, a French refugee who lives in Freeport, who shared her story of escaping from Paris before the Nazis took control along with her husband’s tale of concentration camp survival.

Taub’s Jan. 27 discussion was followed by a live, interactive, virtual tour of Auschwitz, a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps in Poland, as part of the first Holocaust Awareness Day in the high school.

“There’s actually somebody live in Poland, that actually is physically present there to show us some artifacts,” Hewlett High School Principal Alexandra Greenberg, said.

Greenberg invited any teachers interested to bring their classes to hear Taub speak, as well as additional students who expressed curiosity.

“I wanted this to be a more intimate setting,” Greenberg said.

Taub told her story of leaving Paris with her family, taking a train to Bordeaux, a city in France to cross the border and being amid the aerial bombing.

“We get off the train, we’re lucky to be alive, we start walking to Bordeaux,” Taub said.

She showed her shoes that she had worn as a young girl making the trek, with worn down heals. The family stopped 20 to 40 miles from Bordeaux, she said. They then boarded other trains, facing other fascist countries such as Portugal and Spain, and eventually taking a boat to the United States.

Taub also recounted her late husband David Taub’s story. He and his brother were in and out of multiple concentration camps and received help from people throughout their journey that led to their liberation.

Junior Aaron Isakov actually asked Greenberg for permission to attend, because his classes were not viewing the presentation.

“I want to hear more perspectives because we come from the Soviet Union, my family, my great grandfather always told me all his stories, his experience,” Isakov said. “So, I wanted to see everyone’s different experience and what they shared, what’s the difference, what’s the parallels today to what’s happening.”

Isakov also found Taub’s story interesting comparing how her and her husband eventually reached liberation to other stories he had heard of survivors.

“I thought it was interesting because when you hear these stories, there’s always some amount of luck and coincidence, the starts have to align in some way for everything to work out,” Isakov said. “It’s crazy how many lucky things, you can’t plan these kinds of things, opportunities that allowed people to get out and allowed people to live and provide for their families.”

Taub finished her retelling of events by reminding students of an important lesson, she said.

“How courageous must you be to stay alive in such difficult times?” Taub said. “Even staying alive is an act of resistance.”

Taub and her family’s attitudes inspired Isakov, he said.

“They all have strength and resilience and persistence in common, they just keep on pushing through, they’ve have to find some way to make this,” Isakov said.

On the same day, Cedarhurst resident and another Holocaust survivor Fred Zeilberger was honored by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman at the ceremonial chamber in the Theodore Roosevelt Executive & Legislative Building in Mineola.