Elie Wiesel’s mandate “If you can, you must!” rang true for survivor Trudy Album and motivated her 50-plus years of telling her story of survival during the Holocaust to audiences of all ages. While raising her children, she was reluctant to share the details of her horrific experiences as it caused them too much grief. Once her grandchildren began asking questions, she began sharing more freely. Inspired by Wiesel, who famously wrote that when they bury the last survivor, the last witness to history will be lost, she joined Holocaust memorial organizations who sent her out frequently to speak. She traveled to Poland on March of the Living 11 times, sharing her story with young participants who walked along the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of their Holocaust remembrance trips. Now 95, Album is still actively addressing audiences, including our local Teaneck High School, where she addressed close to 250 students on November 20.

For many years, Goldie Minkowitz, veteran math instructor at Teaneck High School as well as coordinator of Jewish student activities and Holocaust education, has organized Holocaust assemblies to mark Kristallnacht in November and Yom HaShoah in the spring, with the ongoing support and encouragement of Peter LoGiudice, principal of the high school. English and history teachers regularly visit the school’s Holocaust Center, and trips to Holocaust museums are a yearly event.

Currently it has become increasingly more challenging to locate Holocaust survivors to speak at the school’s programs, so when friends recommended Trudy Album, her immediate agreement to speak to the high school students was greatly appreciated. Seated in front of a microphone, Album related her Holocaust saga clearly and cogently for over 40 minutes. She spoke of her carefree childhood before the war in a small town near Bratislava, then part of Poland, where her extended family lived together in a large house and where her father was a well-regarded member of the community and owner of a shoe store.

She spoke of the first rustlings of the trouble to come and the actual invasion by the Poles in 1944 when her father, then 44, was drafted into the Jewish Forces of the Polish army and never returned. She described their deportation, first to the ghetto, where they lived briefly, and then to Auschwitz, the notorious extermination camp. She remembers the irony of the giant sign above the entrance, which read “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Shall Set You Free.” She even recalled coming face-to-face with the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, as he waved his staff that signaled people to the right or left, to immediate death or slave labor.

She recounted with sadness that her mother and two younger sisters, ages 11 and 7, held by her mother, were waved to the line facing death. She never saw them again. She recalls the horror of being branded with a number, and even remembers the number, 817291. That number, which was subsequently removed, remains to this day as a scar in her heart.

Album described the constant hunger as something you learned to tolerate but that the thirst was terrible. She told of receiving a piece of bread as the day’s ration and said she would always remember its taste. She described the days of traveling on the inhumane cattle cars with hundreds of bodies and the occasional stops to fling out those who had died en route. She described how thrilled they were to be sent to work alongside German workers in a munitions factory, as it got them out of the frigid Polish winters, during which they were dressed only in thin clothing and mismatched shoes.

As a 17-year old upon liberation, she made her way back to her little town, only to discover that her father had been shot early on and that the other members of her extended family were never coming back. Reuniting with an uncle, she made her way to America to live with an aunt and uncle who had left Poland just in time. Working during the day, she devoted her evenings to study and reading, which she enjoys to this day.

Album’s message to the rapt student audience was threefold and powerful. First, she assigned them the role of firsthand witnesses to the Holocaust as they would be the last generation to actually meet a Holocaust survivor. “Tell your children that you heard testimony about the Holocaust from a little old lady who came to your school and told her story.”

Secondly, know that you are the future of humanity and that you must take upon yourselves responsibility for your fellow man as you are indeed “your brother’s keeper.”

Thirdly, to people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, send them to Holocaust centers, libraries, history books and even tours of the concentration camps.

During the Q&A following her presentation, a question was posed to Album by a faculty member who asked if she had ever lost her faith in God after her experiences. Her immediate response: “Yes, for a short while I did doubt God. But after giving it much thought, I realized that it was man’s inhumanity to his fellow man that was responsible for the Holocaust, and I returned to being religiously observant. Therefore my repeated message to young people is to erase the word ‘hate’ from your vocabulary.”

As in the past, the Teaneck High School students were visibly moved and inspired by hearing firsthand testimony from a survivor of the Holocaust. They crowded around her when she finished speaking and it was clear that they would long remember Trudy Album and her story.