In an extraordinary ceremony of rededication, two survivors of the Holocaust came together in the library of Mercer County Community College in West Windsor on the morning of Sept. 7.

One was Hana Gruna of Hackettstown, one of the few Jews to have survived from the village of Susice in Czechoslovakia.

The other was a Torah scroll from the same village.

"To have you here with the Torah is really a miracle," said Rabbi Norman Patz, vice chair of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, as he welcomed Gruna to the ceremony. "For a survivor to be connected with a Torah scroll from her native town is a miraculous event," Patz said as Gruna and commission members gathered around the glass case that holds the scroll at the entrance to the Mercer County Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center in the library.

The Susice (pronounced "soo-shi-tseh") Torah scroll is one of 1,564 preserved by the Memorial Scrolls Trust at Westminster Synagogue in London, Patz told the group. As the Nazis pursued their murderous path through Czechoslovakia, they confiscated Torah scrolls and thousands of other Jewish ritual objects and transported them to Prague, where they were earmarked for future display as "relics of an exterminated ethnographic species," he said.

After the end of World War II, the Torah scrolls were purchased by a British businessman and philanthropist and transported to London. From there, hundreds have been entrusted to Jewish communities throughout the Western world, where they are preserved as memorials to all that was lost during the Holocaust.

"Today, we are engaged in a ceremony of rededication to contemplate the complex thoughts we need to contemplate under these circumstances," said Patz, who is also the former longtime religious leader of Temple Sholom of West Essex in Cedar Grove. "As we embrace the Torah and its values, we also remember our martyrs. Those Six Million belong to us all."

As the ceremony unfolded, the rabbi led readings from scripture and a recitation of "Eitz Chaim Hi" — "It Is a Tree of Life" — and Cantor David Wisnia of Har Sinai Temple in Pennington chanted "El Malei Rahamim."

The rededication ceremony had its roots in a recent letter from the Memorial Scrolls Trust informing the commission of Gruna's presence in New Jersey, according to commission executive director Paul Winkler.

The idea to rededicate the Susice Torah scroll quickly followed, said Steven Some of Skillman, a former chair of the Holocaust commission. Together with Adam Kaufman of Princeton, a former business partner, Some originally donated the Torah scroll to the Mercer County Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center in 2005. The center is a joint project of the community college, the commission, and the Office of the Mercer County Executive.

"It's being rededicated because by a true miracle, this woman was born in the village where the Torah came from," said Some. "So we thought it would be a really great idea to reunite this woman with the Torah from her village.

"This is exactly what I wanted to do when I brought the Torah to New Jersey, because the Torah is the heart and soul of the Jewish world," he said. "It is a teacher in itself…, a teacher for the entire community to learn about the history of the Holocaust."

Patz remarked in an interview about the exceptional nature of the occasion. "I've been dealing with these scrolls for many, many years now — both through the Society for the History of Czech Jews and the Czech Torah Network," he said, "and it's very rare to unite a Torah scroll with such a history with a person who perhaps heard it being used in her own shul 70 years or so ago.

"It's miraculous — and it's sad," the rabbi said. "To me, the destruction of the Jews as a Nazi war aim is a signal of the collapse of Western civilization."

For commission chair Philip Kirschner, the Susice Torah scroll is symbolic of the commission's spiritual underpinnings.

"This rededication really reminds us of why we exist," Kirschner said. "It's not only to remember the Holocaust, but also to celebrate a victory. It is a victory when you can take a Torah that was supposed to be destroyed and display it here on a college campus in America."

For the 88-year-old Gruna, a survivor of the concentration camps at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, the Susice Torah scroll is symbolic of something far more personal. In an interview after the rededication service, she said that she knows of three other Torah scrolls from Susice that were saved by the Memorial Scrolls Trust. They are now preserved in Jewish communities in Santa Monica, Calif.; Chicago, and the Florida keys.

"I couldn't believe how they were saved. I couldn't believe it. I almost fainted when I heard it," she said as her eyes filled with tears.

"I cry," she said. "All my memories are with the Torah."