The meaning of our Holocaust Torah
In 1975, when our congregation got one of the Holocaust scrolls from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London, we were told that it came from Dvůr Králové nad Labem, an industrial town in northeastern Bohemia. But we were not able to learn anything further about the Jews of the town, not even the names of any of the Jewish men, women and children who had lived in Dvůr Králové before the Nazis deported them to Terezín and from there to the death camps. The government had the names but they had no interest in releasing them.
Why was that? I believe that the names of individuals were not important to the Communist regime. Individualism was a capitalist sin. The desires of individuals had to be submerged for the common good. Everyone had to make sacrifices for the future – a future we now know was never coming.
The suppression of names by totalitarian regimes like that of the Communists is the exact opposite of Jewish expectations of leaders.
Obviously, most of us don’t think individual desires should always or automatically override society’s needs; that would create chaos and anarchy. But it is clear to us now that when even one individual is mistreated by a government, no one is safe at any time.
It was only with the collapse of the Communist regime that the Jewish Museum was able to provide us with names and information about the fate of the Jewish citizens of Dvůr Králové who had been murdered during the Holocaust – 111 men, women and children – and once we knew who they were we could write about them, we could say kaddish for them by name, we could remember them, we could prevent them from being murdered a second time, which is what was happening during the Communist years: their names, their memory, their very existence were being erased.
My wife and I wrote a book about the Jewish community of Dvůr Králové, which led to the construction of a monument at the site of the destroyed synagogue in Dvůr Králové. We went to Dvůr Králové with the members of my synagogue’s Confirmation class in February, 2008 to dedicate the monument. Joining us were the mayor and members of the City Council, priests and ministers, children from the Dvůr Králové schools, scouts in uniform carrying Czech, Israeli and American flags, and Eva Nosková, the one Jewish survivor of the pre-war Jewish residents.
In a telephone conversation prior to the ceremony, Eva told me a very moving story. After the monument was erected at the beginning of November, from the evening of November 9th and through the day on November 10th, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, at least 50 lighted candles and many bouquets of flowers were placed on the monument, a magen david three meters high. Mrs. Noskova had no idea who put them there. She had been worried, she said, that there might be swastikas. Instead, there were memorials – individual tributes in this town in which she was the only remaining Jew.
Because of the respect and honor we have given to our Torah scroll from the destroyed Jewish community of Dvůr Králové, because we have made the names of those forgotten Jews so much a part of our lives at Temple Sholom of West Essex in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, we began the process that led to the creation of the monument and its dedication.
Our Holocaust scroll sits in the center of our ark. It is the scroll which all of our b’nei mitzvah have used since 1975. Our congregants know the story of our scroll, both from the weekly retelling and from our book about the Jewish community of Dvůr Králové. We include the names of the Jewish victims from Dvůr Králové in our weekly kaddish list and annual memorial book, thus keeping their memories alive and helping tell the truth to a new generation.
The Dvůr Králové monument, a memorial we helped to build, is a witness to the darkest time in our people’s history. It, together with the ways we use our Holocaust scroll, is an affirmation of our Jewish faith, the Jewish role in Czech life and the absolute virtue of democracy, where every individual has a name.
Rabbi Norman Patz is the rabbi emeritus of Temple Sholom of West Essex, Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and the president emeritus of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews. He was the founding chair of the MetroWest New Jersey Federation Committee on Holocaust Remembrance and vice chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.
Eva Nosková died of cancer in March 2015.
Rabbi Norman Patz Temple Sholom of West Essex
|