Warren County Community College is now host to a World War II and Holocaust Research Center.

The College held a dedication ceremony on April 26 to mark the opening and was attended by students, college, and regional and state officials, and the public. It was sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Somerset, Hunterdon & Warren Counties.  The research center is located in the College library and is open to the public during regular college hours.

Senior Adjunct Professor Bill Lorenzo, who spearheaded the effort to have the center at WCCC, welcomed the audience with a general overview about World War II and the holocaust. The keynote speaker was be Nina Wolff Feld, the author of Someday You Will Understand: My Father’s Private World War II. In her book, Feld tells the story of her father Walter Wolff, who with his family, fled Germany when the Nazis came to power. In 1942 Walter Wolff joined the U.S. Army where he trained for the Intelligence Corp at Camp Ritchie, Maryland in a unit comprised of former Jewish refugees who were called The Ritchie Boys. Some of those in the unit had their stories told in the 2004 movie-documentary, The Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys served as translators and interrogators, some during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. When the war ended, Walter Wolff was sent to Austria and Germany where he interrogated POWs for potential prosecutions as war criminals at Nuremberg.

Feld reconstructed these events from family lore and her father’s own cache of more than 700 wartime letters and 200 photographs, which he revealed to her shortly before he died.

Feld donated several of her own books to the new Center and the Center is looking for more donations of books or other World War II/Holocaust writings (letters, etc.). Please contact Lorenzo or Lisa Stoll, Library Coordinator at the College, for more information about the Center and to make a donation. For directions and general info about WCCC, visit warren.edu.

Photo: At the dedication of the new World War II and Holocaust Research Center at Warren County Community College are L-R, Robin Wishnie, Executive Directorof the Jewish Federation of Somerset, Warren and Hunterdon Counties, Dr. Will Austin, President of Warren County Community College,  Nina Wolff Feld, author of Someday You Will Understand: My Father’s Private World War II, Bill Lorenzo, WCCC Senior Adjunct Professor, Lisa Stoll, WCCC Library Coordinator, and Larry Glazer, Executive Director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.