Beauty queen and Holocaust education campaigner Hela Young — seen here with her mother, Eva Yungst, a few years before Young’s death in 2002 — will be memorialized in an event at the Union Y on Sunday, April 13.
Sidebar
Memorial programApril 03, 2008
The lives of two extraordinary women will be celebrated at the YM-YWHA of Union County on Sunday, April 10: Hela Young, entertainer and Holocaust educator in whose memory the annual event is held, and the late Sister Rose Thering, whose story is featured in an award-winning film to be screened that day, Sister Rose’s Passion.
The Hela Young Memorial Program will also honor Asbury Park Det. David D’Amico, chosen for his work in promoting prejudice reduction and combating bias crimes.
D’Amico will receive an annual award given in Young’s memory by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.
Young died in 2002 after a long struggle with cancer, at the age of 50. Born in Israel to two Holocaust survivors, Young came to the United States in 1957, and in 1971, she won the Miss New Jersey beauty pageant.
For 24 years she was the on-air spokesperson for the NJ Lottery, announcing the winners on television each week.
“She loved making millionaires,” her husband, Peter Hochman, said in an interview after her death. Their daughter, Erica, was 10 at the time.
But Young, as the saying goes, was not just a pretty face. A graduate of Kean University with a degree in music education and theater and a performer on stage and in movies, soap operas, and commercials, she also worked hard to promote Holocaust education in the state, going on to serve as the education commission president.
Commission executive director Dr. Paul Winkler will be the guest speaker at the memorial event at the Y in Union.
Young’s ideas, said Winkler, “still resound through many of our programs. You might have thought someone like that would only be interested in being out in public, but she was very active behind the scenes; she really got her hands dirty.” He said he became close friends with her and her family.
D’Amico, of the Monmouth County Bias Crimes unit, is past president of the NJ Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) and a pioneer in cultural and diversity training for law enforcement.
Winkler said that D’Amico “is willing to go anywhere — to schools, community groups, wherever he can — to talk about hate crimes, the Holocaust, and genocide education. He is doing amazing work.”
The program to honor Young was started a few years after her death. She and the Union Y had a special connection: Her parents, who lived in Hillside and then Union, were members there, and she performed in shows at the Y. Her father has since died, but her mother, Eva Yungst, is still an active participant in seniors programs.
Asked this week about the memorial event, Yungst said her daughter would have been particularly pleased about the fund supported by the program, which provides support services for needy cancer sufferers. She said Young’s husband and their daughter, now nearly 17, will attend the April 10 event.
Yungst said, too, that Young met and became close friends with Sister Rose Thering, the Seton Hall University professor whose lifelong efforts to expand Holocaust education and forge understanding between Jews and Catholics are featured in the movie Sister Rose’s Passion.
“Hela brought Sister Rose to some events and we met her then. Hela always wanted to make us proud of her — and, of course, we were,” Yungst said.
Memorial program
THE HELA Young Memorial Program on Sunday, April 13, will begin at 2 p.m. with a screening of the movie Sister Rose’s Passion. Dr. Paul Winkler, executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, will address the gathering. Tickets cost $10, with the proceeds going to the Hela Young Scholarship Fund.
- Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com