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Shoah Scroll

Congregation Beth Ahm’s Memorial (Shoah) Scroll

Just beyond our sanctuary’s entrance stands a glass case within which rests a Torah scroll.  It doesn’t take more than a glance at its mantle to realize this Torah tells a special story. It is a Holocaust Torah, one of the 1564 Czech Torahs that comprise the Memorial Scrolls Trust.  How the scroll came to its home at Congregation Beth Ahm could begin with its scribing in Novy-Rousinov, Bohemia in the 19th century.  Or with its confiscation by the Nazis during the summer of 1942, or its transfer to Prague’s Jewish Museum as part of Hitler’s plan to use the scrolls and thousands of other stolen Jewish ceremonial objects as propaganda.
 
But one can also begin in 1984 when Beth Ahm members Nancy and Joseph Jacobson joined a Federation mission to Prague.  Determined that the truths of the Holocaust would not be forgotten, Elie Weisel worked with Jewish Federations across the country to organize missions whose participants would visit The Jewish Museum in Prague.  Nancy recalls, “It was the first such group ever organized. I think the Czech government wanted the tourists; this was one way to make it happen.”  The missions were planned during the era of The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures from the Czechoslovak State Collections, a traveling exhibition that toured the United States and Canada from 1983 to 1986.
 
From their guide, the Jacobsons learned that The Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906.  By 1929 its collection contained archival materials and fine art as well as Jewish ritual objects: silver Kiddish cups, menorahs, spice boxes and the like.  A scant decade later the Museum came under Nazi rule and became a warehouse of plunder for a future museum dedicated to “the extinction of the Jewish race.”  By the end of the war, fifty warehouses were needed to hold the ritual objects and other possessions of their murdered owners.
 
“It was so sad to see,” says Nancy. “There were bushel baskets everywhere!  Everything you could imagine was there: kippahs, bris [kits], Torah covers, pointers, crowns and mantels, Seder plates and Shabbat candlesticks. On and on it went.”
 
By 1963 the Torah scrolls confiscated during the Nazi regime were being acquired by the newly-formed Memorial Scrolls Trust in Westminster, England.  Funds were needed to clean and preserve the Torahs.  Four categories were established to describe the conditions of each Torah: completely kosher; light repair to render scroll kosher; made kosher at great expense; non-kosher and beyond repair.  Nancy and her husband determined then and there they were going to participate.
 
They traveled to London with sons Howard and David to arrange to bring one of the Memorial Scrolls to its new home.  Nancy remembers the experience as one of their highlights as a family.
 
A year prior to their trip, much of Congregation Beth Ahm’s (then Congregation Beth Abraham Hillel Moses) building — the sanctuary, lobby entrance, catering halls and kitchens — were destroyed in a fire.  Joe Mermelstein, the synagogue’s ritual director, ran into the burning building and saved several of the Torahs.
 
“To see our [synagogue] in ashes was devastating for all of us,” Nancy Jacobson recalls.  Yet out of the ashes of the fire, two separate events — the allocation of the Memorial Scroll and the synagogue’s rebuilding — were now coming close to intertwining.
 
In March of 1985 Congregation Beth Abraham Hillel Moses held a celebratory evening, The Precious Legacy Concert and Torah Dedication.  The concert, excerpts from the dramatic cantata The Beadle of Prague, composed by Herman Berlinski and text by Arnost Lustig, was followed by the dedication of the Memorial scroll.  Although the scroll is not Kosher, it is nevertheless part of our shul’s ritual life.  Each year on Kol Nidre, Scroll No. 603, Beth Ahm’s Holocaust Torah, scribed in Novy-Rousinov, Bohemia in the 19th century, is included in the procession and is held on the bima.  It is a powerful moment as the congregation begins Yom Kippur together.
 
Eight decades ago Nazi propagandists intended to use this Torah scroll as an artifact of an extinct people.  Instead, Beth Ahm’s Holocaust Torah is testament to the words embroidered upon it mantle.  The Jacobsons chose the mantle for its eternal message of an eternal people: Am Yisroel Chai. The Jewish People Live.
 
Beth Ahm’s Memorial Scroll, #603, is on permanent loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London. Learn more at www.memorialscrollstrust.org
Fri, September 12 2025 19 Elul 5785