Our Holocaust Torah

 

We at Temple Sholom of West Essex are very proud of our long connection with the  lost Jewish community of D’vur Králové in the Czech Republic. Our connection began in 1975 when we became permanent trustees of the small Torah that sits in the center of our ark. Our b’nai mitzvah read from this scroll and we carry it with joy tinged with sadness on Simhat Torah. We include in our kaddish list and in our annual Memorial Book the names of the Jews of D’vur Králové who were murdered by the Nazis. In 2008, we joined with the town of D’vur Králové to erect a monument on the site of the destroyed synagogue and we now have two books recording the history of that community and our connection with it.(See below) But not everyone at TSWE knows that our scroll is one of 1,564 scrolls from Bohemia and Moravia (today, the Czech Republic) preserved by the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London, with most of them lent to synagogues such as ours that wish to keep alive the memory of our brothers and sisters whose lives were cut short in the Holocaust. We encourage you to visit the excellent website of the Trust to learn much more about the scrolls. Here is the link: www.memorialscrollstrust.org.