Helene Alalouf

Nineteen years ago Yonkers teacher Helene Alalouf attended the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Museum with her mother, a survivor, and she made a special promise.

"My mother was extremely moved by the museum and said how glad she was that her family would not be forgotten," Alalouf said. "I promised I'd keep them alive somehow — that's when the idea of a program bringing youth and survivors together began."

Since then, Alalouf's inspirational Holocaust remembrance program has touched the hearts and minds of more than 30,000 young people in grades 4-12 in the Westchester area.

"It started with a candlelighting program," Alalouf said. "And it's grown into a weeklong remembrance week twice a year."

The Holocaust Remembrance Week, offered in a local synagogue this month in Dobbs Ferry and in April in Yonkers, literally brings history alive by featuring live accounts of ghetto and concentration camp survivors and those who were able to hide and were rescued.

The speakers are volunteers from the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center in Purchase. Participants also view the poster display "Courage to Remember" by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, depicting the history, resistance and impact of the Holocaust.

Alalouf's passion for educating a new generation about the horrors of the Holocaust has earned her the State Education Department's Louis E. Yavner Teacher Award.

Established by the Board of Regents, the award recognizes teachers who have made outstanding contributions to teaching about the Holocaust and other human rights violations.

Alalouf was nominated by Yonkers Federation of Teachers President Pat Puleo and local teacher center director Paul Diamond, both of whom attended the award ceremony at a Regents meeting earlier this year. (For more on applying for the award, see www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/yavner.html).

Recently retired after 31 years, Alalouf continues to educate as an instructor with NYSUT's Education & Learning Trust and as an adjunct professor at Monroe College with a course on Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights in the 20th Century.

"I'm hoping students will ultimately take a proactive role that heightens awareness and action," said Alalouf, whose college course makes connections to modern-day genocide in Darfur.

A highlight of Alalouf's human rights education career came when her mother, Claire Holand, wrote and presented a "Memories from the War" piece to her Yonkers students in 1996.

The sole survivor of her family, Holand poignantly described her "lost childhood" in Poland and the heartbreaking loss of so many family members at Auschwitz.

Holand told the students she had rarely talked about her memories, even to her own children — and that she still had a "scar in my heart" from her experiences.

Holand passed away earlier this fall at the age of 84, shortly after Alalouf was recognized for keeping that promise to her mother years earlier.

"She said 'If you talk, you remember,'" Alalouf said. "I can think of no better way to put a human face on history."