1564 Scrolls, A Legacy of Jewish Life in Bohemia and Moravia

In 1942, as a result of instructions sent by Dr. Stein of the Jὓdische Kiltusgemeinde in Prague, the communities of Bohemia and Moravia packed their Sifrei Torah, gold and silver filials, books and textiles and sent them to the Jewish Museum in Prague. The volume was so great that no less than forty warehouses were required to house these treasures. As a result the inventory of the museum, which had been in existence since 1906, increased fourteen- fold.  The Germans had this vast hoard catalogued by Jews, who were deported to Concentration Camps once the work was finished.  Unfortunately very few of them survived.

For many years it was believed the Germans had intended to create a Museum of an Extinct race. The 2012 publication of Ark in Memory, written by Magda Veselska of the Jewish Museum in Prague, discusses the issue and states that there are no documents to prove this. 

There had been at least 350 synagogues in Bohemia and Moravia, but by the end of the war more than sixty had been destroyed. After only three years of freedom there was a Communist coup on 27th February 1948 which, amongst other things, took over the Jewish Museum and warehouses, subsequently transferring some 1800 Torah Scrolls to a damp warehouse that had once been the sixteenth century Michle synagogue outside Prague where they remained until they came to London in 1964.

At Hull Reform Synagogue, we are lucky enough to hold two of these scrolls MST#319 and MST#231. Our scrolls are Orphan scrolls, meaning that we do not know the specific town from which they came, however we do know that they were from Bohemia and Moravia. Our scrolls are on permanent loan from The Memorial Scrolls Trust in London.

To find out more, please visit www.memorialscrollstrust.org