Illinois ? Fritzie Fritzshall gazed up at the illuminated wall and scanned the rows of victim names engraved in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, when one suddenly jumped out: Bella.

Bittersweet memories flashed before her of the aunt who took care of her at age 13 when they were prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Her mother’s sister hugged her each night and reassured her things would someday be all right.

“She saved my life in Auschwitz,” Fritzshall recalled, standing in the “Room of Remembrance” at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. “If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here.”

Fritzshall, who lost her mother and both brothers at the camp, is among thousands of local Holocaust survivors whose solemn stories echo throughout the 65,000-square-foot facility opening today.

The $45 million museum houses survivor testimonies and artifacts including a Nazi-era rail car, an original volume of the Nuremberg war crime trial transcripts and photographs.