Czech Torah

About

Congregation Shir Hadash is proud to be the caretaker of a Czech Torah scroll on loan to us from the Memorial Scrolls Trust which was set up to care for the scrolls. Their Czech Memorial Scrolls Museum displays some 150 scrolls from the collection together with over 400 binders, as a permanent memorial to the martyrs from whose synagogues they come; many of them are distributed throughout the world, to be memorials everywhere to the Jewish tragedy, and to spread light as harbingers of future brotherhood on earth; and all of them bear witness to the glory of the holy Name.

Czech Torah Scroll Certificate

The certificate provided by the Trust reads, in part:

The Sefer Torah number 1101 . . . is one of the 1564 Czech Memorial Sifre Torah which formed part of the treasures which were saved by being collected in Prague during the Nazi occupation, 1939 to 1945, from the desolated Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, and which then came under the control of the Czechoslovak Government for many years. The Scrolls were acquired with the help of good friends, from Artia (the Czechoslovak State Cultural Agency) for Westminster Synagogue, where they arrived on the 7th February 1964.