Yad Vashem, the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, was established in 1953 as a museum and resource center to honor the memory of the Six Million. One of its features is an avenue of more than 600 evergreen carob trees through which visitors walk to reach the museum. It is called the Avenue of the Righteous.
The commemoration is not bestowed lightly. Much documentation is needed before the authority awards the title of Righteous Gentile. More than 2,000 additional cases are awaiting consideration by a special committee headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice. In addition to a tree honoring a Righteous Gentile, Yad Vashem bestows a medal with the Talmudic inscription:
“Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he had saved the whole world.”
THE GARDEN OF THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES is a project of the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee of the Jewish Community Center. The idea for the Garden, patterned after the Avenue at Yad Vashem, belonged to Halina Wind Preston.
Mrs. Preston was a Jewish educator and lecturer on the Holocaust for more than 30 years. As a young lady barely in her 20s, Halina Wind hid from the Nazis for 14 months in a sewer in Lvov, Poland. She dedicated her life after the war to keeping alive the memory- of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Mrs. Preston located Holocaust survivors living in Delaware—and in one case a Christian couple who had saved Jews—and compiled a list of area Jews who owed their lives to Righteous Gentiles. The 1981 tree-planting ceremony coincided with an Expo celebration at the Jewish Community Center, during which various elements of Israeli life were recreated.
In filing a 1981 report to the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center on the success of the tree-planting ceremony, Mrs. Preston wrote:
“… The trees, planted in honor or memory of those valiant Christians who saved Jewish lives during the Nazi era, will remain — we trust — an eternal symbol of unity between Jew and Gentile, then, now and for all time; a veritable Garden of the Righteous on Garden of Eden Road.”
It was her dream that the Garden eventually would be enhanced into a permanent monument, which would serve as a focal point for educational programs on the Holocaust.
In March 1982, the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center approved the idea of making the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles a permanent memorial.
Mrs. Preston died a year ago, on Dec. 2, 1982, at the age of 60 following open-heart surgery at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. After her death, the Holocaust Education Committee which she founded was renamed in her honor. Harriet Wolfson assumed the chairmanship, and the committee voted as its most urgent priority to formally dedicate the Garden as a permanent monument to the Righteous Gentiles of the Nazi era.
Some of the funding came from the contributions of more than 300 individuals and organizations locally and around the world in memory of Mrs. Preston.