OuR Story

The Memorial Scrolls Trust has allocated Czech scrolls to synagogues and organisations around the world. The scrolls are never sold or donated, but allocated on loan. Communities that close or merge with other Czech scroll-holder communities are obliged to return their scroll to the Trust.

Time Line 1964

The Scrolls Committee agrees a policy to distribute Sefer Torahs to Jewish communities across the world, prioritising kosher scrolls to Orthodox communities

Bohemia & Moravia

Jews have lived in Bohemia and Moravia for more than a thousand years, and over that time a rich Jewish culture developed. As in most European countries, those Jewish communities were alternatively welcomed and expelled over the centuries and life was precarious. By the middle of the 19th Century they no longer suffered from residential, demographic or occupational restrictions.

LONDON

In 1963, the Artia, a company run by the Czech Communist government approached Eric Estorick an art dealer who frequently visited Prague to buy paintings for his Grosvenor Gallery in London, to ask if he was interested in buying some Torah and other scrolls. He approached a client, Ralph Yablon who discussed the situation with Harold Reinhart, Rabbi of the Westminster Synagogue. 

prague

The Jewish Museum in Prague was created in 1906 and at the time the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia the collection contained some 760 items. The German authorities immediately began to enforce racial anti-Jewish laws the day the Protectorate was established, the Jewish Museum in Prague continued to exist.

AFTER WAR

The Memorial Scrolls Trust has allocated Czech scrolls to synagogues and organisations around the world. The scrolls are never sold or donated, but allocated on loan. Communities that close or merge with other Czech scroll-holder communities are obliged to return their scroll to the Trust. Besides those allocated in the United Kingdom, Scrolls have been sent to contries