Holocaust Torah

This Torah was written over 150 years ago. The Torah was used in the town of Neveklov, a small town in Bohemia near Prague (current day Czech Republic). In 1940, congregations near Prague were being closed down or destroyed. In 1941, deportations of Jews began.

A group of people from Prague's Jewish community came up with a plan to bring the religious items from the surviving synagogues in the towns surrounding Prague to the comparatively safe Prague in 1942. After the Nazis were persuaded to accept the plan, more than 10,000 artifacts were brought to the Central Jewish Museum in Prague. This included about 1800 Torah scrolls. The curators of the museum hoped that these items may one day be returned to their original homes. All except two of the curators were eventually transported to Terezin and Auschwitz.

After World War II, the Czech Jewish community was too depleted to need the objects. The museum eventually became the Jewish Museum of Prague. The Torah scrolls were transferred to the abandoned synagogue at Michle, a suburb of Prague, where they were kept until a deal was negotiated between the Westminster Synagogue in London and the Czech government to purchase the scrolls. On February 7, 1964, 1564 scrolls arrived at Westminster Synagogue and the Memorial Scrolls Trust was eventually established.

References

http://huc.edu/research/museums/skirball-museum-in-cincinnati/current-exhibitions/eternal-people-jewish-experience