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Temple Emanu-El

Spiritual. Egalitarian. Welcoming.

Memorial Holocaust Torah Scroll

A Living Link to a Vanished World

Temple Emanu-El’s Memorial Torah Scroll seen resting on its custom Torah Mantle.

Our Holocaust Memorial Scroll was written sometime at the end of the 19th Century and comes from a small community synagogue somewhere in the Bohemia, Moravia, or Silesia regions of what is now called the Czech Republic.

As the threat of war grew, Jewish communities in these areas sent their Sefrei Torah to the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague for safekeeping. This Torah Scroll was one of 1564 Czech scrolls that survived the war. The synagogue that was its home, and the people who worshiped there, did not.  In all, over 78,000 Czech Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

After the war, the entire collection of saved Torahs were sent to the Westminster Synagogue in London. The Torahs were then catalogued (ours is MST#1037) and sent to synagogues worldwide as a symbol of what was destroyed, and as an everlasting reminder that they will never be forgotten.

For more information about how the scrolls were saved and distributed around the world on permanent loan, please click on Memorial Scrolls Trust.

 

The Pinkas Synagogue in 1909.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The official note about the condition of the Torah.

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