Czech Memorial Torah Scroll #62

This Torah scroll was written in 1744. It was confiscated by the Nazis from a synagogue in Tŕebič Czechoslovakia, and shipped to Prague. Tŕebič had a Jewish community dating back to the year 938 and until 1938 there were two synagogues – one built in 1639 and another in 1707.

During the Holocaust, 1,370 Jews were assembled in Tŕebič and deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Only 35 of them survived. Today there are no Jews living in Tŕebič.

Torah #62 was one of about 1,800 Torah scrolls, each meticulously recorded, labelled, and entered on a card index by the Museum’s staff with a description of the Scroll and the place it had come from; along with hundreds of thousands of other religious artifacts that were confiscated and warehoused by the Nazis,with the intention of creating a ‘museum of an extinct race’. 
 

After the war, they were transferred to the ruined synagogue at Michle outside Prague where they remained until they went to London.  

Some fifty congregations

re-established themselves in the Czech Republic and were provided with religious artifacts, not necessarily from their own communities.  When the Communists took over the government of the country in 1948, Jewish communal life was again stifled, and most synagogues were closed. 

Their possessions went to the

Jewish Museum of Prague.