On Sept. 10, Roman Ferber, a former Schindlerjude — one of the close to 1,100 Polish Jews saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler — is planning to leave his home in Monroe Township to visit the Remuh Synagogue of his youth in Cracow, Poland.

The temple was used by the Nazis to store firefighting equipment, but the building was not destroyed. According to Ferber, the Nazis accepted the historic legend that "whoever destroyed the temple would die a terrible death."

So they left it alone.

This will be Ferber's 23rd visit to his hometown — and it won't be as just a nostalgic tourist, but also as a pivotal participant in High Holy Day services.

The ritual began in 1984, when Ferber "got enough nerve to go back" for the first time since the war. Up until then, he said, he found he couldn't make the trip; "I had all kinds of bad memories originally and couldn't pull myself together."

He recalled painfully how even after the war "the Jews underwent another pogrom in Cracow. There was terrible anti-Semitism, including beatings of Jews," said Ferber. "I was forced to hide behind a large grave in a Jewish cemetery for four days."

When he finally did go back home in '84, the synagogue president made Ferber an offer he couldn't refuse.

"All of a sudden, he told me they had nobody to read the Torah," Ferber said. "I spent four years in yeshiva, so I said, ‘What's the problem?'"

"Can you really help?" the president responded.

Ferber accepted the challenge.

"I had to do that because my dad comes from a very fine home. Our house was open to anybody on Shabbos. My dad always believed God will help.

"As a result of all this, I decided I have a certain responsibility to my dad and family, so I have been going back every single year."

According to Kate Craddy, acting director of Cracow's Galicia Jewish Museum, while it is "extremely difficult" to count the size of the Jewish population in the city today, the synagogue itself has 163 members.

According to Ferber, "many hasidic Jews travel from many countries to be at the Remuh Synagogue for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur."

Ferber's family connection with the synagogue and his past was immortalized a couple of years ago when a commemorative plaque was hung in the temple; it reads:

"Thou Shall Not Kill. In Loving Memory of the Ferber Family. 88 members murdered by the Nazi Holocaust, 1939-1945. May their souls be eternally blessed. Dedicated by the survivors, Fred Ferber and Roman Ferber."

Fred Ferber, Roman's cousin, plus two of Ferber's uncles, his four sisters, and his father's father survived the Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and the Plaszow labor and concentration camps.

Ferber said he feels he has still another responsibility to his family and past: to set the record straight on his Holocaust experience.

Concerned that many books on the Holocaust have been written by somebody other than survivors, he is writing his own account.

Ferber is particularly distressed with a 2004 book on Oskar Schindler whose author, said Ferber, mentions him on many pages — but never spoke to him. "He never interviewed me and never checked anything. He totally messes up names and times. If you were to look at this book, it is very inaccurate," said Ferber, flipping through underlined passages on pages on which his name appears.

It is a concern, he said, he has shared with the author and publisher — with, as yet, no satisfactory response.

So he himself has taken up the pen because, he said, "it's extremely important for Jews and non-Jews to understand what really happened to us. Why it happened, there is no answer; it happened."

Ferber was placed on Schindler's List by his brother, Moniek, camp secretary at the Plaszow concentration camp. He was later killed.

"I was lucky not to be taken off the list," Ferber said — although it almost didn't mean anything.

"We left Plaszow with all other Schindlerjuden and were sent to Gross-Rosen [concentration camp], where we spent four days and then were shipped to Brinlitz in Slovakia," Ferber recalled.

When Schindler left there to visit his wife, the camp commandant rounded up six fathers and their children and sent them to Auschwitz — Ferber and his father included.

On the last day of the war, Ferber's father was injected with gasoline and died — but his son survived the camp by organizing a detail of boys to pull garbage wagons.

In regard to his book — tentatively titled Amber in Ashes (Poland is a principal producer of amber) — Ferber describes it as a novel because, he said, "when we can't substantiate something, we are fictionalizing it."

"It covers the time from when I was six years old, up to the end of the war and coming to America," he said. Ferber and his mother — who survived Bergen-Belsen — arrived in the United States on Columbus Day 1949.

The 74-year-old Ferber lived in Rockland County in New York for 32 years before moving to the Greenbriar at Whittingham adult community about eight years ago. An urban planner with a doctorate in public administration from New York University, he served every New York mayor from John Lindsay to Rudolph Giuliani.

While still called upon periodically for consultation, Ferber's focus these days is his book. He has written 14 chapters totaling 456 pages and spends one day a week working on it, as his agent negotiates its publishing fate.

Ferber said he hopes to have Amber in Ashes out by February or March to coincide with a BBC documentary on the Holocaust in which Ferber is interviewed.

"My family," said Ferber, "is pushing me like crazy," including his wife, Maxine; the couple has three children and three grandchildren. "They wanted me to do this years ago, but now it is very timely.

"It is my family story and I decided to do it right now to leave a legacy for my kids."