Sixty historic Torah statues took part in a procession at an Upper East Side synagogue on Sunday to celebrate the recovery of more than 1,500 religious artifacts from Nazi-occupied Prague.
Representatives from Jewish temples in the tri-state area gathered at the Temple Emanu El Stryker Center in Manhattan for a Jewish prayer that praised the Torah and called on the world to reflect on anti-Semitism, especially during the Middle East wars. Participated in singing and speeches.
“Despite the changing world around us and the sharp rise in anti-Semitism, we as Jews stand taller, more proudly in our identity, and more faithful to the Torah. It feels much closer,” said Rabbi Amy Ehrlich of Temple Emanuel.
The Torah, known collectively as the Memorial Scroll Trust, originated in Jewish communities in the Czechoslovak region from the 1200s to the early 20th century.
When the region was invaded and occupied by Germany in World War II, these religious texts were looted by the Nazis along with other valuable items from the community, but miraculously they remained in a wartime warehouse in Prague. was.
Not all Torahs finished the plunder cleanly. Some were charred, riddled with bullet holes, some covered in blood, and some contained handwritten notes that read, “Remember us.”
When the scrolls were finally recovered, some of the rescuers said they reminded them of corpses and smelled like death.
“There were over 1,000 scrolls, each wrapped in polythene,” said Philippa Barnard of London’s Westminster Synagogue. “I can only describe it as the smell of death.”
The Torah remained in a storage facility in Prague for almost 20 years until the cash-strapped Czech government sold the scroll to a London art collector in 1964, when it was sent to Westminster Synagogue for storage and restoration. It was done.
Since then, the scroll has been loaned to synagogues around the world and is celebrated as a symbol of Jewish persecution and perseverance in the face of generations of horrific violence.
“MST Czech Torah collections had a similar experience to the Jews. They were collected, numbered, stored in poor conditions, and their health deteriorated,” says the curator of the scroll collection. said Lois Roman.
“Unlike the Jews, most of the scrolls remain. Now it’s their turn to play a role in telling the story. My greatest wish is that there will be no need for Holocaust education, but unfortunately we live in a time when we need even more Holocaust education.”
