Initially, architect Peter Eisenman said, he didn't think the placement of his Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin was all that important.

But he has come to believe it is absolutely right that this "memorial to the exterminated Jews of Europe" should be in the middle of the city, with "the exterminators all around."

But as sharp as those words were, he also expressed great satisfaction about the response to the 4.7-acre array of concrete slabs, which opened to the public two years ago.

"It's amazing how Germans have taken to it," the South Orange native told an audience at Kean University in Union on April 5. "It's become part of everyday life in the city. People arrange to meet there for lunch dates. It has become a Berlin icon."

Eisenman's talk, "To Forgive Does Not Mean To Forget," was the second of three lectures in the ninth annual Jewish Studies series hosted by Kean's Jewish Studies Program and its Unity Club. The overall theme of the series this year is The Victim and the Question of Forgiveness.

Giving his age – almost 75 – as an excuse, Eisenman stayed seated as he spoke, except when he rose to discuss slides of the memorial. But his casual, forthright tone held the audience riveted as he described the years of struggle to get the go-ahead for the $50 million project.

Teamed up with New York sculptor Richard Serra, Eisenman created a design that won a competition sponsored by the German government in the mid-1990s. Despite their willingness to adapt the design, for three years they came up against one obstacle after another. Opposition to construction of the memorial came not only from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but from Jewish luminaries like former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, too.

Eisenman put on a heavy German accent to quote Kissinger. "Every time I met him, he would say, ‘You know ah'm against zis memorial.' A lot of German Jews were afraid it would stir up anti-Semitism," the architect explained.

At last they got the go-ahead. Their creation sits in the heart of the city, with the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament, and the Brandenberg Gate as a backdrop. Their design, the architect said, conveys "rationality gone bananas."

Even after the approval to build, there were problems. It turned out that the concrete to be used for the construction was to be supplied by the same company that provided the Zyklon-B gas used in the gas chambers. Eisenman said he got into big trouble when he joked to local people that it also provided the gold fillings so many people have in their mouths.

"The Germans wanted something with weeping Jews under a willow, á la Rodin," Eisenman said. What they got is long rows of 2,700 blank concrete slabs of varying heights planted on an undulating field. Though the design is not intended to be reminiscent of the concentration camps, Eisenman said, he wanted to evoke something similar in the present, something unsettling and isolating.

"If you let go the hand of the person you're with, you won't see them again for half an hour," he said.

The experience of creating the memorial was very intense, not something he would want to undergo again, but it proved to be transformative on a personal level.

Looking around at the many familiar faces in the audience, the graduate of Maplewood's Columbia High School said, "This is a strange occurrence for me, being back home with mishpoche. Not that that was a word that was familiar from my home."

He was raised in a secular setting, he said; his family had Christmas trees, and they didn't celebrate any Jewish holidays. "Maybe I'm blanking, but I don't remember any," he said.

Asked if being Jewish played a role in his selection as the memorial designer, he said no. He didn't even know at first that Serra is also Jewish. But with each stage of the project, researching the Holocaust and talking with both Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, his awareness of his own identity grew. "I would leave America an American, and return from Germany feeling like a Jew," he said.

Though he still does not engage in religious practice, he no longer doubts his own identity, he said. Now even his children, born of marriages to two non-Jewish women, regard themselves as Jewish, he said. "I've come a long way from my strangely unidentifiable being," he added. "I try to talk about it in a palatable way, but it was a life-changing experience."

After graduating Columbia High in 1950, he went on to study at Cornell University, Columbia University, and Cambridge University in Britain. His career was studded with high-profile successes from the start. His designs for large-scale housing projects, individual homes, and prestigious public institutions have won awards in the United States and abroad. In 2004 he won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the International Architectural Biennale in Venice.

At Kean, smiling at him from the first couple of rows were a number of childhood friends. One woman brought out an album of photographs from their kindergarten days at the Marshall School in South Orange, and they gathered around him after his talk to compare notes on the years since.

For their benefit in particular, he said, "About 300 people visited the memorial last year. The lines are long – it takes an hour or two to get in. If you want to go, e-mail me; I'll get you tickets."

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