Holocaust survivor Sam Schoffer (second from left) reaches out to touch rails that were part of a rail system in Poland over which cattle cars filled with Jews traveled to the Nazi death camps. With Schoffer are (L-R) Holocaust Resource Center Director Gail Rosenthal, survivor Fred Spiegel and Dean of General Studies Dr. G. Jan Colijn. (Photo by Marilyn Kessler) A small group gathered outside the facilities building at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey last Friday as four ordinary looking train rails arrived by flatbed truck from North Jersey. Though innocent in appearance, these rails had been part of a network of tracks that carried cattle cars packed with Jews, pressed together like livestock, through one of history's darkest moments to the death camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau,Treblinka, Theresienstadt, Majdanek.

The rails were brought here to play a new role in history. They will be incorporated into the design of the new entrance to the school's expanded Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.

Among those present at the informal ceremony when the rails arrived, was Holocaust survivor Rosalie Simon, who now lives in Margate. She was 12 when her family and other Polish Jews were herded onto cattle cars for the trip to Auschwitz.

Leo Schoffer and his father, Sam, hold the architect's rendering of the entrance to the Holocaust Resource Center. With the Schoffers are (L-R) archirtect Martin Blumberg, Dean of General Studies Dr. G. Jan Colijn,Holocaust Resource Center Director Gail Rosenthal, and David Carr, Provost and Stockton Executive Vice-President. (Photo by Marilyn Kessler) "The tracks are a sad reminder of what we went through. I remember well, it was 1944," she said softly, almost in a whisper. "The number of people for each car was 80. I was number 81. I was separated from my family. I was standing there, crying. I was in another car. All around me they were all strangers.

Simon was later reunited with her family at Auschwitz, but eventually she would become the family's sole survivor.

While the symbolism of the rails will serve as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust, whether the tracks were the actual rails that carried trains headed for Auschwitz was of little consequence to Simon.

"I look at any tracks today and I still remember," she said. "Tracks, the wheels, a train moving. To this day, when I hear a train I think of that day. It was very scary."

Architect Martin Blumberg had suggested that the design for the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center include railroad tracks in the center's entrance way.

"The idea to incorporate rail tracks really came to me from our meetings with focus groups," said Blumberg. "But actually, it was really [Center Director] Gail Rosenthal's idea the way it turned out. Gail is very good. She and [Director of General Studies Dr. G.] Jan Colijn. I had suggested getting rail tracks for the entrance. But it was Gail who said, 'let's try to get the original tracks."

The four rails, each 20-foot sections of track and weighing 600 pounds, will be symbolic of the network of trains in Europe that were the main mode of transporting Holocaust victims from the ghettos to the death camps. They were removed from a rail bed in the region of Bialystok, and will be suspended over the entrance to the center and will extend into the center itself.

Blumberg, holding a rendering, explained how the entranceway would be structured using distressed wood, expressing the discomfort of the people as well as the total discomforting period of that time in history.

Above the entrance will be a rainbow. "To show hope, along with the despair of the time," Blumberg said. There will also be a flat-screen monitor where visitors will view survivors telling their stories.

Also among those attending the afternoon gathering were Colijn, Stockton Provost David Carr, Leo Schoffer and his father, Sam, Stockton Prof. Yitzak Sharon, and local survivors Betty Grebenschikoff and Fred Spiegel.

Grebenschikoff, who had escaped Europe to Shanghai in 1939, said the day brought back the memory of her relatives who were among the countless Jews brought to the death camps in cattle cars. "And I remember how lucky I was," she said. "It brought all of that back."

Spiegel said that there were people who were aware of what was happening during the Nazi regime, but that "nobody made an attempt to the stop trains, which they could have."

Spiegel, who was from the Netherlands, echoed Simon's words. "It doesn't make a difference where the tracks are from. The east or the west. To me, they mean the same thing."

Procuring the rails was no easy task. Helping to make the vision a reality included College President Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., the Holocaust Resource Center Executive Committee and numerouscommunitysupporters.

Dr. Michael Berenbaum, a former Ida E. King Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at Stockton, known for his work as project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., was the consultant on the project.

Rosenthal said that Berenbaum's cooperation, dedication and expertise were essential in obtaining the railroad tracks. He and Stockton officials worked with the Polish government, the Museum for the History of Polish Jews, customs officials and shipping companies in Poland and the U.S. to secure the tracks.

The tracks were shipped from Bialystok to the Polish port city of Gydnia, with a professional videogapher in Poland chronicling their journey. They were then placed in a cargo container and loaded onto a freighter owned by Maersk, one of the largest shipping companies in the world. After sailing to Hamburg, Germany, they were transferred to the SS Glasgow Express. and then crossed the Atlantic, arriving in New York Harbor and eventually at a port at the New York Container Terminal.

Rosenthal said that throughout the trip, the cargo was treated with respect and dignity "every step of the journey." When the rails arrived at their fnal destination however, the journey took some surprising turns. Rosenthal, who was at the harbor with Brian Iacone, an award-winning photo journalist who was permitted to document the tracks' arrival, was told that there was no way of knowing which container, among the thousands loaded on the ship, contained the rails.

Word soon came back that the rails were located in a container surrounded by other containers emblazoned with the Star of David and the logo of the Zim Line, an Israeli shipping company.

"We were told the Zim's containers are not often loaded onto the SS Glasgow Express in Hamburg. And here they were completely surrounding our railroad tracks," Rosenthal said. "We were told that was a very unusual occurrence."

In another twist of irony, the rails arrived just prior to the JewishHighHolidays.

The Stockton Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, is one of the first facilities of its kind at a public college in the U.S. Leo Schoffer, the son of Holocaust survivors Sara and Sam Schoffer, has donated $500,000 to the facility, the largest single donation in the history of the college. A separate room, made possible by a $250,000 gift of the Azeez Foundation, has been named in honor of Holocaust survivor Professor Liviu Librescu, the professor who sacrificed his life to save his students during the shooting spree at Virginia Tech in 2007.

A third major contribution, $100,000, has come from Jack Koopman of the Netherlands.

Leo Schoffer who was at the informal ceremony when the rails arrived at Stockton, watched as those present walked about the rails, touched them, and read the still legible imprints that told where they had been milled.

He said he recalled taking a trip several years ago to Poland and to where his parents had lived. He remembered an incident that occurred while viewing tracks that had carried Jews to concentration camps.

"I was looking at the tracks and had just bent down to touch them when I heard the whistle of a train," Schoffer said. "It was a strange feeling."

Schoffer said that from the outset, the Stockton Holocaust Resource Center has been a unique and special place.

No one present could deny that as the center has gown, every stage of it has been something special.

As Betty Grebenschikoff and Rosalie Simon turned and slowly walked away from the rails, their arms interlocked, Rosenthal summed up the day.

"We're truly like family today."

Tim Kelly of Stockton 's Office of Public Relations contributed to this article.