A Torah scroll that the Nazis stole from a Czech congregation on display at The Memorial Scrolls Trust in London. (Courtesy of the European Union for Progressive Judaism)
(JTA) — A Torah scroll that the Nazis stole from for their planned museum on Judaism in Prague will return to use there on Simchat Torah, a holiday that falls later this month and celebrates the seminal Jewish text.
Memorial Scrolls Trust, a London-based nonprofit that preserves Torah scrolls and other scripture, on Sunday said it will transfer scroll no. 1052, as it is catalogued there, to the use of Ec Chaim, a Progressive Jewish congregation in the Czech capital, ahead of the holiday that begins on Sept. 27.
In 1942, the Nazis seized the scroll, which was written in 1890 in Brno, a city situated about 100 miles southeast of Prague. They had the scroll shipped to the