The Nazis and Czech gendarmerie began deporting the Jews of the Czech lands to the Theresienstadt (Terezín) Ghetto in late 1941. Within three years, they had imprisoned 76,603 of the remaining 93,000 Bohemian and Moravian Jews in Theresienstadt, a place of suffering, enslavement, and death—and a transit camp for Auschwitz. After the Czech lands had lost 78,000 Jews to genocide and 26,000 to flight, there remained only 14,000 Jews. This was just ten-percent of the interwar population.
We honor the victims and survivors of the Holocaust through the scrolls they once cherished. In 1942, Jewish leaders and scholars convinced the Nazi Protectorate to gather the property of the Jewish communities in Prague for expert cataloging. Though the Nazis murdered most of the Jewish workers, they left behind a cash of over 18,000 Torah scrolls. Most became the property of the State Jewish Museum, which had been nationalized in 1950. Jews and state officials debated how to preserve them; what to do with them.
In 1964, the state forced the sale of the remaining 1,564 Torah Scrolls—indirectly—to the Westminster Synagogue in London, which endeavored to repair the scrolls. The synagogue established the Memorial Scrolls Trust to oversee the distribution, on permanent loan, of the Czech scrolls to Jewish communities and institutions around the world. There are currently around 1,000 scrolls in the United States. One even resides in the White House.
For a detailed history of the Memorial Scrolls and to ensure that your community is fulfilling your obligation as scroll custodian, visit the Memorial Scrolls Trust.
Interested readers can learn more by purchasing 1564 Scrolls: A Legacy of Jewish Life in Bohemia and Moravia by Miles Laddie, published by MST.
We join together, sixty years after the sale, to memorialize the dead and celebrate our enduring culture—our history transcending love of Torah.
Organizers
Temple Beth Tikvah
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey
Rabbi Israel S. Dresner Center for Collaborative Programs and Learning
Memorial Scrolls Trust
Partners
Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey
Wayne Public Library