Glen Cove Holocaust center shines light on lifesaving heroes

Agota Adler was 7 and living in Budapest, Hungary, when she spent months in a tight space with her mother and dozens of others seeking to hide from the Nazis.

It's a story of families forced to go underground, living in abject terror, like so many others passed down since the end of World War II and the Holocaust.

Now 88 and living in Great Neck, Adler revisited that time Wednesday night in Glen Cove. She joined others at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County to honor four people, including a legendary Swedish diplomat whose work establishing safe houses for Jews in Budapest saved her life and thousands more.

The honor, unveiled Wednesday, is a light display with photographs of the diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, and three others credited with saving Jewish lives from the Nazis, at great personal risk.

Adler stood as evidence Wednesday.

Being packed into a two-bedroom Budapest apartment set up by Wallenberg with more than 40 people "wasn't a luxury," Adler said. "But we survived."

The light display includes the phrase "Righteous among the nations" written across four approximately 5-foot-tall panes bearing the four names and faces. It hangs from the ceiling above a foyer staircase leading to the center's second floor.

"I owe my life, my mother owes her life and my late husband owes his life to Wallenberg," Adler said, standing on the stairs before the side of the display showing a photograph of the dark-haired Swedish diplomat.

"These four individuals represent the tens of thousands who risked their lives to do what was right and moral," said memorial board member Bernie Furshpan, who, along with his wife, hung the panels and also has a personal connection. "They serve as role models for courage and compassion."

Along with Wallenberg, the display includes black-and-white photographs of Oskar Schindler, a German business owner whose lifesaving efforts were the basis for "Schindler’s List," the 1993 motion picture; Irena Sendler, a Polish nurse who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland; and André Trocmé, a French Protestant pastor who encouraged his congregation to shelter Jewish refugees.

Furshpan added that those who aided Jews during World War II came from diverse backgrounds, "including the likes of Muslims, Christians and even atheists."

"They range from high-ranking diplomats ... to peasant farmers, who saved and rescued my father," he said.

In Wallenberg's case, he was a "diplomat and businessman" when he "was appointed legation secretary of the Swedish diplomatic mission in Budapest in June 1944," according to a Swedish government website biography.

He issued Swedish passports, legitimate and counterfeit, and protected Jews in safe houses, "off limits" to Nazis as they flew the Swedish flag, according to Holocaust memorial education director Donna Rosenblum.

Furshpan said he hopes the new light display will "inspire individuals and communities to oppose discrimination and prejudice" at a time "when anti-semitism is rising in various parts of the world, especially here."

Police departments in Nassau reported 61 hate crimes in 2022, up from 28 the year before, according to the latest available New York State data.

Suffolk police departments reported 28 such crimes in 2022, unchanged from the year before.

New York defines a hate crime as one that targets a person, group or property because of bias against a list of "protected" characteristics including race, religion or sexual orientation.