OUR Czech Torah Scroll

Temple Beth Ora is home to one of 1,564 Torah scrolls saved from Czech Jewish communities during World War II. 

When Germany invaded Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, Jewish synagogues were closed and over 200,000 Jewish artefacts were collected and shipped to Prague, including 1800 scrolls—many of which were Torah scrolls. For many years it was thought that the Nazis planned to use these artefacts to establish a Museum of an Extinct Race. Today, some historians believe that members of the Jewish community, most of whom did not survive the Holocaust, collected the items with the goal of safeguarding them.

According to the Memorial Scrolls Trust website, 117,551 Jewish people lived in Bohemia and Moravia at the time of the 1930 census. Between 1939 and 1942, 26,000 people managed to escape by paying a large tax and securing a visa to enter another country.  Over 85,000 Jewish people were deported and 78,000 of those people were murdered. The names of those who were murdered are recorded on the walls of the Pinkas synagogue in Prague. 

In the 1960s, Jewish philanthropist and founding member of London’s Westminster Synagogue, Ralph Yablon, learned about the collection and decided to bring the Torah Scrolls to London. Yablon purchased the 1,564 scrolls that were still being housed in a warehouse that had once been a 16th-century synagogue. Shortly after the scrolls arrived in London, the Memorial Scrolls Trust was established as an independent charity to look after the scrolls. Today, the Torah scrolls are loaned out to Jewish communities around the world, where they serve as memorials to the many Jewish communities that thrived across Bohemia and Moravia prior to the Holocaust. 

Temple Beth Ora’s Memorial Scroll is #558, and it was used in or around the Bohemian town of Horovice, where a Jewish community was established in 1875. Scroll #558 was written around 1875, so it’s possible that it was created specifically for this community. There were approximately 300 Jewish people living in Horovice in 1904 when a newly built synagogue was inaugurated. The community in Horovice was one of the hundreds of communities that sent their ritual items to curators in Prague. The Memorial Scrolls Trust holds 17 Torah Scrolls that are recorded as having originated in Horovice, but it’s unlikely that the small community in Horovice would have been home to that many scrolls at one time. It’s more likely that Horovice served as a collection point for other, even smaller communities in its vicinity, and #558 might have come from any one of those communities.  

The TBO community has been caring for Memorial Scroll #558 since 1983. The covering that protects the scroll was donated in memory of Sonia and Jack Ghitter. The Ghitters’ granddaughter, Sandy Ghitter Mannes, and her husband, Cantor David Mannes, have been long-time members of TBO. Though we don’t know the names of the specific individuals who used the scroll before it landed in Prague, then London, and then Edmonton, caring for this scroll helps honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The Memorial Scrolls Trust has shared with us a list of 35 names of Jewish people from Horovice who were transported and murdered, and we share those names here as an additional way of honouring their memory: ​​
​