Paul B. Winkler, 79, led Holocaust education in NJ

Paul B. Winkler, 79, of Lawrenceville, N.J., the groundbreaking executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education from 1975 to May of this year, died of cancer on Tuesday, July 12, at his home.

In March 1994, the New Jersey Senate adopted "an act regarding genocide education in the public schools." It stated that "every board of education shall include instruction on the Holocaust and genocide in an appropriate place in the curriculum of all elementary and secondary school pupils."

Philip Kirschner, the commission chairman, said his agency was an advisory group until the 1994 act gave it teeth.

New Jersey "was the second state, besides Illinois, to have a statute that required Holocaust and genocide education," he said.

Mr. Winkler, Kirschner said, "was a righteous man who spread a lot of good in this world."

Margit Feldman, 87, of Somerset, N.J., was one of the Holocaust survivors who carried their stories to New Jersey classrooms for Mr. Winkler.

Taken from her Hungarian home by the Nazis, Feldman survived four concentration camps, among them Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

"I had my 15th birthday in Auschwitz," she recalled.

Mr. Winkler helped make her later years memorable.

"It's a tremendous help for the future generations," she said, through a mandatory curriculum, "for them to know what an uncaring world is for a fellow human being."

"I don't look at the Holocaust as a Jewish issue," Feldman said. "I look at it as a human issue."

Mr. Winkler, she said, "taught what he believed in, with a full heart. An outstanding human being."

While he was directing the advisory efforts of the commission before the 1994 act, Mr. Winkler had several other responsibilities.

From January 1986 to January 1990, he was superintendent of Lower Camden County Regional High School in Lindenwold.

From 1969 to 1978, he was director of the Education Improvement Center for the New Jersey Department of Education. From 1978 to 1983, Mr. Winkler was the department's deputy assistant commissioner for its division of school programs and special education.

And from 1983 to 1985, he was educational director for the department's Southern Regional Curriculum Service Unit.

Mr. Winkler earned a doctorate in educational leadership at Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1974.

He began his career as an elementary-school teacher and then an assistant principal in Abington from 1958 to 1966.

He then was an elementary school principal and pupil personnel services director in Collingswood from 1966 to 1969.

The American Jewish Committee of Central New Jersey gave him its Philip Forman Human Relations Award.

He also earned the New Jersey Education Association Humanitarian Award and the Martin Luther King Academy of Leaders award, among others.

Rowan University gave him its Distinguished Educator Award, and the New Jersey Assembly voted to give him a Citation for Excellence in Education.

Mr. Winkler is survived by his wife, Cecelia; son Jeffrey; daughter Sharona; a brother, five grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

Services took place on Wednesday, July 13.

Donations may be sent to the Cafe Europa Endowment, Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Mercer County, Suite 211, 4 Princess Rd., Lawrenceville, N.J. 08648.

Condolences may be offered to the family at plattmemorial.com.

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