Memorial Torah Scroll
Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David is honored to have one of the 1,564 sacred Torah scrolls from the Memorial Scrolls Trust.
Our sacred scroll was written in 1822. It gave hope and learning to 500 Jewish families of a synagogue dating to 1690 in Bucovice, Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. This Jewish community, one of the oldest in Moravia, had been a refuge to Jews expelled from Brno, the Moravian capital in 1454. For 120 years, this sacred Torah was an important part of life in the Jewish community of Bucovice.
In 1942, the Nazis imposed the “Final Solution” and the Jews of Bucovice were rounded up and deported to death camps. 1564 Torahs seized from synagogues in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia were brought to Prague from the desolated or destroyed synagogues by the Nazi official in charge of the Czech “protectorate”. The Nazis appointed scholarly Jews to catalog the 1,564 seized scrolls and other religious objects. They were warehoused in the damp cellar of the now unused Michle Synagogue in Prague. Synagogue “booty” – prayer books, pictures, embroidered vestments, ceremonial objects of silver and gold were also collected by the Nazis. It is said that the Nazis had planned to commemorate the destruction of the Jews by creating a museum of “exterminated ethnographical group.”
Almost 20 years after the war in 1964, English Jews, with foresight and generosity, arranged for the purchase, packaging, and transportation of the 1,564 Torahs to Westminster Synagogue for eventual distribution to synagogues, yeshivas, and other Jewish institutions.
Our sacred scroll is on “permanent loan” to CBS-BD. It was assigned #7895 by the Nazis and #1059 by the Memorial Scroll Committee. The Society for the History of Czechoslovakian Jews states that there are no known Jewish survivors of Bucovice. The only remains of Jewish life there are three sifrei Torah, one of which is entrusted to CBS-BD.
We, our children, and grandchildren, to the thousandth generation, have an obligation to remember what happened and to respect the honor of this trust until the end of time.