Background to Busting the Myth

For those of you who have asked for more details about the Memorial Scrolls Trust's current initiative to remove the myth of the Nazis creating a 'museum of an extinct race' in Prague during World War Two from the history of the Czech Scrolls, may I present our main source.

Magda Veselska, Head of Collections Management at the Jewish Museum in Prague, has written a monograph on the history of the museum,  "The Ark of Memory:  The Journey of the Prague Jewish Museum through the turbulent 20th Century". Ms Veselska has had complete access to the archives and has thoroughly researched the extant information. Details of the contents of the book may be found here. Although the writing is in Czech, there is an English summary at the end. In the summary, Ms Veselska states:

"Journalistic and publicity texts, however, frequently refer to the Prague museum as the “museum of an extinct race”, which it was allegedly supposed to be. There is no support for such a claim in the preserved archival documents. More than a characteristic of an alleged propaganda objective of the Nazis in Prague, it is an attempt to provide an additional explanation for the wartime events; from the perspective of the Prague museum, this refers more to the outcome of the wartime events rather than to any clearly defined aim. The form of the “museum of an extinct race” slogan was influenced by several authors and did not become definitively established until the 1960s."

So there is no documentary evidence of any Nazi intentions, plans or acts to collect artefacts in order to set up a museum with the aforementioned theme. There IS evidence that a project to catalogue and preserve Czech Jewish artefacts was developed within the Jewish community, long before the arrival of the Nazis. Veselska writes:

"“Related to the efforts aimed at putting together a representative museum collection was an endeavour to systematically document the Jewish cultural heritage in the Czech lands and to collect the information in one central institution (the museum), which was brought about by the rapid process of assimilation of the Czech Jews. The first project involving a detailed documentation of all the movable and immovable properties belonging to Jews was prepared by the Jewish Museum in Prague in collaboration with the umbrella organization of Jewish religious communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia at the beginning of the 1930’s".

As they realised how dire the situation was becoming, the Prague Jewish community staff working at the museum saw an opportunity to preserve the movable assets of the Jewish communities under the rule of the Protectorate by using the museum as a repository to keep them safe during the war. It is thanks to the efforts of these Jews - people like Tobias Jacobovits (former librarian of the Prague Jewish community) and Josef Polak (the chief curator) - that the scrolls for which we care survived to tell their story. We owe it to them all to make sure we get it right.

MYTHBUSTERS!

Many of our scroll-holders like to share information about the history of their Czech torah through display notes near the scroll and articles on their synagogue websites. As we visit their virtual pages, we have noticed that many sites are currently perpetuating some inaccuracies that were previously believed to be facts.

Although in the past it was said that there were plans by the Nazis to create a so-called “Museum of an Extinct Race” in Prague, the fact is that this is a complete myth. 

There is no documentary evidence to support this assumption, and recent studies show that the saving of the scrolls and ritual objects in the Jewish Museum in Prague were the result of the actions of members of the Jewish community. 

In 1942 The Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia were instructed by the central offices of the Jewish community in Prague to send their artefacts and Torah scrolls to the Jewish Museum in Prague where they were catalogued and stored. The project to catalogue community artefacts had begun in the late 1920’s. 

It is our hope that, rather than perpetuate a myth demonstrating the evil deeds of the Nazis, we can highlight the actions of the brave Jews who worked to save what has become the precious legacy for which we care today.

If you come across the old version of the story, do please let us know so we may contact those involved and encourage them to update their text!  

Happy Tu Bishvat!

This could be one of the all-time great Jewish cartoons! It is by Yaakov Kirschen, and celebrates the upcoming holiday of Tu Bishvat, aka the New Year of the Trees. Here at the MST we love to think about how what we do now will give sustenance to the future - much like planting seeds and trees. Wishing you all a happy Tu Bishvat!

A New Year's Resolution: to visit the MST in 2013!

The Scrolls Museum on the third floor of Kent House in Knightsbridge is one of London's best-kept secrets. We'd like to change that, and let everyone know we are here and waiting to meet you. If you have an interest in history, Judaism, Torah scrolls; or want to learn something from a world different to the one you usually inhabit, come and see us this year. The photograph above is of a recent article in the Hendon Reform Synagogue magazine and describes a typical visitor's experience.

We are open on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10 am and 4 pm. Entry is free (although of course there is a box discreetly displayed for voluntary donations). E-mail us at czech.scrolls@virgin.net for further information, or leave us a message at 0207 584 3741.

See you soon!

Senator Daniel Inouye R.I.P.

The United States Senator Daniel Inouye has died this week. We remember him at the MST thanks to information from the Hawaiian guardians of our scroll MST #154 from Polna. This article explains how the senator ensured safe passage for the scroll from London to Kona by organising first-class seats for it all the way. He was truly our friend - may he rest in peace.

Wikipedia
The Guardian
The Boston Herald
The Washington Post

Czech Scrolls Holiday Hours

Greetings to you at this festive season!

The Czech Scrolls office and museum will be closed from 21st December 2012 and will reopen on 3rd January 2013.

Please note that it is unlikely that e-mails and telephone messages will receive a response until we return since we do not have remote access to our machines.

Looking forward to meeting you in 2013!

Czech Scrolls at Limmud UK 2012

If you're planning to be at Limmud UK next week at Warwick University, why not check out the MST presentation? You may find it in the catalogue under "The Czech Scrolls - a second life". This is how they catalogued us:

The Czech scrolls - a second life
Ariel Friedlander
Location:  Ram 2
Tracks:  Now & Then
Type:  Lecture
The Memorial Scroll Trust's collection of 1564 Torah scrolls from Czechoslovakia are almost all that was left of the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia after the Shoah. What roles may and do they play currently in the lives of congregations and organisations across the world?

What, you'd like a date and time as well? Ok ... next Wednesday 26th December at 22:15. See you there!

Scrolls Reunion

Czech Torah Scrolls from Dale Bluestein on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, scrolls from the MST collection that were previously together in the town of Susice were reunited in a Yom HaShoah memorial service in Princeton, New Jersey. This brief film reports on the event.

The MST is hoping to do something similar in 2014 to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the scrolls in London. If your community has a scroll, why not encourage people to bring it to Kent House on 8th February 2014?! If you start now, you'll have time to save up for the ticket ... and if you watch this film, the rabbi will give you a tip on how to shave a little off the cost :-)

A Second Life

Our scrolls are certainly a memorial to the lost Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia. We believe, however, that the idea of a memorial is something that lives in the present as well as recalling the past. It is for this reason that we encourage our scroll-holders to involve their scrolls in the current life of the congregation. A Torah scroll should not just sit in a display case and be looked at as a dead relic of a dead community. It needs to work, and it has so much to share.

I was delighted to see the following on the website of Congregation Achduth Vesholom in Fort Wayne, Indiana:

"In early June 1997, after several months of exploration, a call was placed to London, England. Within the first few moments of that call to the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust at the Westminster Synagogue, it was made clear that the Temple was ready to assume the responsibility of having a memorial scroll on permanent loan ... a condition of guardianship. We were cautioned that all undamaged Torahs had been released much earlier world-wide, and that the Temple would be receiving a badly damaged scroll:  Torah #1172.

Five days later, the Torah was delivered to Achduth Vesholom by a member of the congregation who had volunteered to retrieve it from London. As the 300-year-old parchment was gently unrolled to its full length, its devastation became increasingly obvious. Indeed, before us lay a broken piece of history. Three books were missing. Of the two remaining - Deuteronomy and Numbers - only parts were readable. Fire and water damage bore testimony to the horror to which that Torah had been a silent witness.

As the Temple was in process of commissioning a Torah to commemorate the congregation's 150th anniversary, an idea was placed before Dr. Eric E. L. Ray, the master scribe who had been hired for this project. After critical examination by Dr. Ray, we were advised that our devastatingly crippled treasure could be restored - its destroyed sections rewritten and the new pages interspersed among the old - to become a living link to the past ... a poignant symbol of the indestructibility of our people.

On Sunday, October 11, 1998 - nearly one year after the task was begun - the Torah was completed in the Temple's sanctuary and presented to the congregation by Dr. Ray. On Simchat Torah, the scroll was unrolled around the perimeter of the sanctuary and, having risen from the darkest period in Jewish history, once again enfolded those celebrating its origins. On Saturday, October 17, 1998 ... the Shabbat morning celebrating the 150th anniversary of our congregation ... Torah #1172 was read for the first time in its new home."

The Temple website may be found here

Chinese Whispers

It is incredible how an event may become distorted over the years as the story is told and retold, just like the children's game of Chinese Whispers. At the MST we must fight that constantly with regard to telling how the scrolls were saved. Here, for example, is a current web page that describes one of our scrolls previously from Kutna Hora:

"This scroll now in the Bristol and West Progressive synagogue has a remarkable provenance. A Jewish businessman travelling from England to Czechoslovakia just after the Second World War learned by chance that many Torah Scrolls were still in a cellar where they had been originally dumped during the Nazi occupation of that country. Many of the scrolls were defecated on or otherwise defaced. Some reportedly still had blood on them from the Jews who were killed when the Nazi ransacked and destroyed the synagogues. As there were virtually no Jews left in the country, a few English Jews arranged to bring a number of the less damaged scrolls to the Westminster synagogue in London in the 1950s. There they stayed until a travelling torah scribe called into the synagogue to see if any work was available. He ended up staying several years to repair the scrolls. One was donated to the Bristol congregation, some of whose original members were themselves Holocaust survivors."

The current link may be found here.

We have written to them, noting that the paragraph contains hardly any accurate information. The scrolls were in the Michle synagogue, not dumped in a cellar. There was neither excrement nor blood on them, and no defacement either. The scrolls were not ransacked by the Nazis, but sent by the Jews to the Prague Jewish Museum. Etc. It's a dreadfully emotive piece, and utterly false!

There is another factor that creates inaccuracies, i.e., when new information is discovered that negates the previous version of the story. The main example for the MST is the idea that the Nazis were planning a Museum to an Extinct Race and that is why they collected the scrolls. We are trying to erase that concept, since there is absolutely no evidence that such a plan ever existed. Rather it seems likely that the Jews in the Prague Museum organised the collection in order to save as much as they could in desperate times.

To find out more, have a look at our website. Meanwhile, do make sure that when you tell people about your Czech scroll, you share the most up-to-date version of the story!

AS OF TODAY, 6TH NOVEMBER 2012, WE HAVE RECEIVED NO RESPONSE AND NO CHANGE HAS BEEN MADE