‘What never again is all about’

The Northern New Jersey Holocaust Memorial and Education Center committee is in the process of creating a memorial and education center on Teaneck’s municipal green.

“We understand that most young people don’t know much about the Holocaust,” committee co-chair Steve Fox of Teaneck said. “And with Holocaust denial going on, even people who have heard about it don’t believe the actual numbers of people who were killed, or the full extent of it. With the rise of antisemitism, it’s more important now than ever to make a strong statement, a concrete statement, that this is very important for you to learn about, and to see the lessons about what happens when authoritarianism and fascism and racism take hold.”

The project “is really a grassroots effort,” Mr. Fox continued. Like everyone on the committee, he’s a volunteer. The project has been in the works for almost 10 years; it has been designed, and the historical information that will be included has been compiled with the help of Yad Vashem. Now the committee is launching a fundraising campaign with the goal of starting construction in the fall. “We’re hoping to raise about $450,000,” Mr. Fox said. A few corporate sponsors already have stepped up. Contributions and pledges so far amount to approximately $130,000.

Mr. Fox is the son of a Holocaust survivor. His father, Joseph Fox, escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and eventually joined a group of partisans. “I like to say he went from victim to victor,” Mr. Fox said. Remembering and commemorating “has always been part of our DNA in my family.” His father was very active for about 40 years in an organization that ran Holocaust commemorations in Manhattan; those programs later were taken over by the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Mr. Fox got involved with Teaneck’s Holocaust Commemoration Committee, which organizes local programs for Yom HaShoah, about 20 years ago. “As an outgrowth of that, I felt that it would be important, especially with the number of living survivors diminishing every year, to have something permanent in the ground to teach people about the history of the Holocaust. Learning the lessons of the Holocaust hopefully makes people better citizens.”

The commemoration committee is a division of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck; Mr. Fox became its president two years ago. The council formed the memorial committee.

The memorial design has had many iterations over the years. The original plan called for a larger structure containing a lot of information. “The aha! moment” that led to the current, smaller design “came when we discovered that we could use augmented reality and transform an outdoor structure into a virtual experience,” Mr. Fox said. “When you point your phone at different parts of the memorial, you feel you’re actually walking into a camp or you’re seeing people’s testimonies. We hope it will provide an experience — not just something to walk over and look at and walk away from, but something that people will learn from. Something that will open a whole new world for people.”

The memorial will consist of seven panels arranged in a semi-circle — one in the center, with three on either side. The six side columns will represent the 6 million Jews murdered. The front of each of the six will contain information and photos about a different aspect or stage of the Holocaust — Jewish Life in Prewar Europe; The Rise of the Nazis; Life in the Ghettos; Concentration Camps; Partisans; and Post-War Heroism. The augmented reality feature will provide visitors with more in-depth information about the content on the panels. “If you point your phone at a column, a number of links will pop up,” Mr. Fox said. “When you click on those links, you might be brought to a video or to somebody’s testimony about that subject. So it’s really a living memorial in every sense of the word.”

On the other side of the columns, visitors can make dedications and include information about their own relatives. “This is a concept that does not exist anywhere in the world,” Mr. Fox said. “No other memorial offers the public an opportunity to dedicate a space to a loved one in a public place — to a grandparent, great-grandparent, whatever the case may be.”

The goal is for local people to “humanize their relatives” with “living dedications” by including photos, information, a short video, of a clip of Holocaust testimony. This information will be embedded on one of the columns and available to visitors, who can gain access to it on their phones.

“It’s really the ultimate tribute to a Holocaust survivor or victim,” Mr. Fox said. “The memorial will be a place where people can bring their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and say, point your phone and you’ll see who your ancestor was. We are doing this to involve the community.” The funds raised by offering these dedications will be used for construction costs and for educational programming.

Although the memorial will be in Teaneck, Mr. Fox stressed that it is not only for locals. He hopes people from all over the area will take advantage of the experience and the dedication opportunities.

The committee also offers space on the outward facing side of a column for corporate sponsorships. Businesses, shuls, and schools will be able to demonstrate their support for the project and will have the opportunity to upload a video message that can be accessed by pointing at its name. The message could be about their commitment to Holocaust education, survivors involved in their organization, or whatever they would like to say on the topic, Mr. Fox said. People who are not dedicating space to relatives will also have an opportunity to demonstrate their support for the project by including their own names on a list of donors included on a column.

Bergen County has one of the largest Jewish communities in the country, Mr. Fox said. “And it’s really fitting that we have something here to memorialize the Holocaust.”

The memorial is not designed to compete with Holocaust museums, “which are obviously much bigger and much more extensive,” Mr. Fox continued. “We want to offer local communities a place that’s easily accessible, a place that students will come to, a place where people will learn. And we want to offer people the unique opportunity to dedicate space to a family member,” to include a relative’s story in a public space. “And the way we’ve enhanced and humanized the experience is really unique, so we hope this will be an attraction that will bring people to Teaneck to look at it and experience it.”

The project has broad communal support. The Rabbinical Council of Bergen County and the North Jersey Board of Rabbis are involved. Rabbi David Fine, who leads Temple Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Ridgewood, and has served as president of the North Jersey Board of Rabbis, sees the project as particularly important given the current climate. “We are living in a difficult time when historical truths are disputed, public consensus is elusive and basic morality seems to be turned upside down,” Rabbi Fine wrote in an email. “The memory and testimony of the Shoah needs to ring out and help our own society find a way forward that rejects hatred, racism and antisemitism and is rooted in understanding, compassion and justice. The Holocaust Memorial in Teaneck will plant that testimony within the soil of Northern New Jersey, dedicating space to the lessons of time and providing a sanctuary for learning and healing.”

Sari Sheinfeld of Teaneck is a member of the memorial committee. Ms. Sheinfeld, who has a master’s degree from Yeshiva University in Holocaust and genocide studies and teaches classes on the Holocaust at YU’s Stern College, sees the planned memorial as a place that will become “part of the fiber of our community.

“Building this on the municipal green, where we have other educational centers, such as the library, and the Rodda Center,” a community center, “is a few blocks away, I think cements this as part of what is important in terms of looking forward, not just looking backward,” she said. “We’re not building it only as a memorial to the past — that’s a monument. It’s not a monument. It’s a place of education and forward thinking.

“Anything that involves education tends to be forward looking,” she added. “We’re going to need to study the past in order to understand the direction of our future.”

The memorial will be “accessible day and night,” Ms. Sheinfeld continued. “You don’t need to reserve a time slot. You don’t need to buy a ticket. This is not to say that you shouldn’t go to a museum — there are incredible museums — but this is something that is so close and so accessible.” And the dedication opportunities that allow people to tell the stories of family members “give some longevity to those stories.

“To be able to have a place for introspection, for education, I think speaks volumes about the greater Bergen County community,” she said. “That we’re creating a memorial, that we’re creating an education center, that we’re dedicating a space.”

For Mr. Fox, now is the time to get the project built. “This has been a long time in the works,” he said. “We’ve spent a lot of time and effort to make this really special and educational. We have a few sponsors at this point, but we really need the community to come together and get us over the finish line so we can put a shovel in the ground.”

“With today’s environment of rising antisemitism, we need to make a statement and we need to teach people how important the lessons of the Holocaust are. We say never again is now. We have to make sure everybody understands what never again is all about.”