Stuart Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court Stuart Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and the son of Holocaust survivors, interviewed local Holocaust survivors at a unique program at Stockton College titled "The Relevance of Remembrance."

The Chief Justice, conducted the interviews during the recent program, which was part of the William J. Hughes Lecture Series.

"Hearing the first-hand testimonies of Holocaust survivors is both an excellent learning experience for students and a critical means of preserving history," said Jan Colijn, dean of General Studies.

"These survivors leave us with two lessons: Genocide is hell, yet their survival personifies the resilience of the human spirit in the most dire of circumstances," Colijn said.

The survivors agreed with the thrust of the evening, saying that hearing surviors' stories and remembering the Holocaust were of critical importance.

One of the survivors, Ernest Paul, who was born in Czechoslavakia, said "We need to leave a message that it will never happen again." Paul, who spent time during World War II with an underground Zionist group, said "I wake up sometimes at night, and I'm thinking, what would have happened if the world, the free world, would have reacted."

Also giving testimony were Eta Levin-Hecht, who spent several years in a Jewish ghetto in her native Lithuania before her mother smuggled her out in a potato sack, and then lived with a Christian family who kept her hidden for six months, and Rella Roth, who spent time in three different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she last saw her parents and three brothers.

Stockton President, Dr. Herman Saatkamp Jr, said, "There's a famous quote from the Auschwitz memorial that says, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' "

The evening' event was sponsored by the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton in conjunction with the College's Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.

Justice Rabner was appointed to the NJ Supreme Court in 2007 after serving as Attorney General under Governor Jon Corzine. He is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University Law School.

The William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey serves as a catalyst for research, analysis and innovative policy solutions on the economic, social and cultural issues facing southern New Jersey.

The Center serves as a forum for public discussion of policy issues so as to engage both citizens and policy makers, frames policy issues in a manner that encourages broader civic engagement and strengthens the voice of southern New Jersey in the public debate.

A joint project of Stockton and the Jewish Federation of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center was originally dedicated on October 2, 1990. In 2009, it was re-named in honor of local survivors Sara and Sam Schoffer.

It serves as a resource for the study of the Holocaust and its significance for the past, present and future, and conducts teacher training in Holocaust and genocide education.