The Historic Torah Scrolls
Our Torah scrolls come from Czech Bohemia and Moravia and were saved after the Holocaust. This area of Europe, Czech Bohemia and Moravia, had 350 functioning synagogues before the Shoah. Many were attacked or even burned down and others were left abandoned to decay. When the Communists came to power after the Shoah, they directly destroyed 80 synagogues and the contents of additional synagogues in this area.
After the War, a devout band of Prague Jews searched the area to assemble remains and brought them to the Central Jewish Museum in Prague.
“Here they labored under appalling conditions to preserve these remnants of Jewish life, including saved Torah scrolls. They intended for the results of their work to be protected until one day they could be returned to their original sites, but the Czech Jewish community after the war was too depleted to be able to do so. They did prepare a catalogue of the collection which was then housed in what became the Jewish Museum of Prague. London Jews were able to purchase 1,564 Torah scrolls from the Communist government and took them back into Jewish hands at the Westminster Synagogue in London.”
For more fascinating information about the Czech Torahs, see: https://memorialscrollstrust.org/index.php/czech-scrolls-museum/the-scrolls
