Meir Berger, rabbi for the New Synagogue on Center Avenue, explained the long journey of the museum and how it came to fruition.

"There's a destiny to everything," Berger said.

Berger said Michale Zelensky, a Holocaust survivor, was liberated from a concentration camp in 1945. He was given the choice of traveling to the United States or Israel. But instead Zelensky chose to travel to Strasbourg, a city in France that borders Germany. There he found an 11th century synagogue destroyed by Nazi soldiers in 1941 and experienced an awakening.

"Zalensky said, ‘Hundreds were killed around me, yet I survived. I was destined for something, but I didn't know what,’" Berger said.

Zalensky made a life for himself by rebuilding the synagogue that had been deserted from during World War II. He was able to retrieve 80 percent of the items that were saved by local residents. He also met his wife, started a business, and was later honored by the French government for restoring the synagogue.

Berger met Zalensky through Zalensky’s daughter, a member of Berger’s synagogue. When Berger traveled to Strasbourg to visit the synagogue, he was taken aback by what he witnessed. When he noticed the detailing of the upstairs railing that over looked the synagogue he thought, "I could do the same in my synagogue to emulate what he's done," Berger said. "Some people light candles. This is how we can be ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ with him."

Soon after, synagogue members such as Fort Lee artist Leon Madison donated Holocaust related items.

"He made a sculpture that encompassed everything the Jews experienced in the Holocaust," said Berger.

The bronze sculpture, named "We Were Chosen," depicts a boy with his hands raised surrounded by other victims of death and destruction. A photograph of the same boy and other families being taken to gas chambers served as the inspiration.

Ronnie Streithler, the museum curator, built a replica of wood used to support the train tracks that lead to extermination camps.

Another haunting piece is a hanging panel with the back of several heads looking toward the black wall representing darkness. It was inspired by a dream that the creator Bruce Freund experienced.

Suddenly the makings of a museum seemed to take on a life of its own. And Berger was inspired to reach out to the community as Zalensky had and collect Holocaust pictures, books and other items old and new that would eventually become a museum.

Opening Day

Local officials attended the opening, May 4, just days before the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence. Some were shocked by what they saw; others tried to hold back their emotions.

"I don't even understand how I survived," said Holocaust survivor Sonia Cooperman.

Hope Thoon, one of the founding members of the museum, immediately comforted Cooperman.

"You are the message," Thoon told Cooperman. "You are here to bear witness to what we all have to remember."

Some of the pictures illustrated Jewish women and children selected to be put to death as they walked toward a gas chamber. The piercing looks of fear and despondency appeared to encase visitors as they walked through the museum. A letter on display was a heroic accommodation accompanied by an iron cross to a Jewish soldier in the German army during World War I. Hitler signed it.

And as parents, children and grandparents walked through the museum observing books, letters and other Holocaust related items, many exchanged stories of loved ones, which created a sense of commonality in the room.

"You don't have to be Jewish," said visitor Carol Wild. "We all know somebody that is part of a group that has been persecuted."

For some, the museum experience took them back to where it all happened.

"A few years ago I visited Auschwitz in Poland, Dachau in Germany, plus other concentration camps in Holland and Czechoslovakia," said Assemblywoman Joan Voss. "It was unbelievable to physically be in the place where men, women and children went to die."

Voss explained the state of New Jersey recently mandated that children learn about the Holocaust in school.

"It’s important to understand that what happened can happen again," said Voss. "My father, Arthur once told me, ‘What happens to any human being happens to us all.’"

Berger is worried that the world today has begun to forget about the Holocaust.

"A Muslim school in Kentucky told the public schools to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum and they did," Berger said, noting that a similar incident occurred in the United Kingdom. "It reminds me of when Hitler burned the all books."

Bergen said that once people found out about the museum, he received several artifacts, including pictures and letters from Jews living in Germany who wrote to the German government pleading that they spare the lives of their family members. Those requests, Berger said, were ignored.

"It’s important that people like Rabbi Berger take the initiative to educate, alert and remind the community of what exists," said Ayelet Ann Weiss, a resident of Edgewater. "And what potentially exists and how it should never be forgotten."

The Artists

During the Holocaust, the Third Reich took a special interest in eliminating intellectuals, scientists, and artists because of their relevance to the community and their ability to preserve the Jewish civilization and its history through art.

Leon Madison, a member of the synagogue and contributing artist to the museum still sees the genocide movement as alive throughout the world today as it was in 1945.

"It’s still happening in places like China, Tibet, Sudan, Mongolia, Kuwait, South America, Egypt, and Israel," said Madison. "It’s such a beautiful world. If only we enjoyed the peace instead of destroying each other."

Another Fort Lee artist and synagogue member, Debra Weinberg broke down her mixed emotions as she looked at her family name in the museum’s Holocaust name book.

"It’s a big day - not joyous - but significant," Weinberg said. "It’s a statement to the town and the world."

Berger is no stranger to war. As an 11-year-old child he was wounded in Israel going to a grocery store for food. But as a rabbi, he now searches inward and prays for peace, rather than trying to rationalize why anyone would cause genocide or why God would allow it.

"I ask for God's help. He doesn’t intervene, I have to ask for it," said Berger.

Berger explained how that same intervention can only come through awareness.

"The museum started not on its own, but through higher intervention," Berger said. "But I had to recognize it in order for it to come to that."