Torahs of Czechoslovakia relay story of survival

Memorial Scrolls Trust in London, England, rescued a collection of some 1,500 Torah scrolls and 400 Torah binders collected at the Jewish Museum in Prague when the Nazis occupied Bohemia and Moravia provinces in Czechoslovakia during World War II. The book, “Out of the Midst of the Fire” by Philippa Bernard, tells the story of the Czech scrolls.

The Trust encourages synagogues to build the heritage of their scroll and the memory of its lost community into the life of their congregation. It provides congregations with materials and advice on research. More than 1,400 of the scrolls are on loan to Jewish and non-Jewish organizations around the world and 1,000 are in the United States. The majority are at synagogues and other Jewish institutions, several at universities and elsewhere including the Royal Library, Windsor and the White House.

Each scroll has a brass plaque with the scroll number on a disc on one of the wooden rollers. It is accompanied by a certificate with details of its original Czech community when it is known.

Congregation Ohev Tzedek in Boardman has scroll No. 58 from the Trust. A new display case was dedicated Friday.

Congregation Rodef Sholom, 1119 Elm St., Youngstown, also has a scroll from the Trust, No. 706.

Temple El Emeth, 3970 Logan Way, Liberty Township, also has a scroll from the Trust, No. 271. Children of Israel, which also is housed at 3970 Logan Way, has a Holocaust Torah.

Czech Memorial Scroll Centre, located in London, features an exhibition on the story of the Scrolls. Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia were wiped out by the Germans during WWII. The scrolls were rescued from deserted and damaged synagogues.

In February 1964, some 19 years after the last German troops surrendered in Prague, London saw the arrival of 1,564 Torah scrolls representing hundreds of Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia that had been wiped out in the Holocaust.

For more than 20 years, the scrolls had been unattended in a warehouse, a former Prague synagogue. They were in danger of completely deteriorating from disuse, dampness and lack of care.

The State Jewish Museum in Prague had taken over the scrolls then turned them over to Artia, the official agents of the Czechoslovak government in charge of cultural properties.

In 1963, Artia officials asked Eric Estorick, a well-known London art dealer, to help.

Estorick and Chimen Abramsky, a historian and authority on Hebraica and Judaica, visited the warehouse and examined some 250 scrolls, most minus protective covering. Some were wrapped in tattered prayer shawls, another in a woman’s garment and another tied with a small belt from a child’s coat. One scroll was spattered with human blood.

The two men made arrangements to ship the scrolls to London, where they would be stored at Westminster Synagogue.

They were transported first by five sealed railroad cars, the largest shipment of Torah scrolls known in Jewish history.

These Torah scrolls from Czechoslovakia were part of a huge collection of Jewish ceremonial objects that the Germans had confiscated for a permanent exhibit of “relics of the extinct Jewish race,” which they planned after winning the war.

The Germans forced Jews in Prague to sort, classify and catalog these treasures. For the Jews, it was a short reprieve as after the work was done, they were sent to the death camps. But, in part because of their work, the Torah scrolls and the other sacred objects, survived.

XSources and Web sites: www.czechmemorialscrollstrust.org and www.czechtorah.org.