Our Holocaust Torah

Mendocino Coast Jewish Community is honored to have possession of a Czech Holocaust Torah, loaned to us by the Memorial Scrolls Trust. As part of our responsibility to the original owners of this Torah, we must tell its story.

Each one of these scrolls not only carries the ancient text of the Jewish people but also enshrines the spirit of survival, revival, courage and hope – qualities that have become the abiding strength of the Jewish people.

–Message from the Scrolls: Unlocking the Silence, learning materials provided by the Memorial Scrolls Trust

History of our Torah

Moravia, now part of Czechia, was home to numerous thriving Jewish communities in the 1880s. However, these communities started to decline, and by the early twentieth century, had largely consolidated their synagogues and Torahs in Sedicany, a town about 60 kilometers south of Prague.

As the second World War raged and the Nazis swept through Moravia, deporting and murdering the Jews of the area, many of the Torahs in use by these communities were shipped to Prague, where they were catalogued and stored by a courageous group of Jewish museum curators. The curators worked tirelessly and under great duress to ensure that the Torahs and other artifacts would be recorded. It was as if they foresaw the survival of the Jewish people, and worked to ensure that their history and culture survived with them.

In all, about 1,800 Torahs were cataloged. The curators were eventually deported, and only two survived the war. The Torahs ended up in a warehouse, stacked on shelves and forgotten after the war. Then, in 1963, the right people learned of their existence and worked to rescue the Torahs. 1,564 Torahs were purchased and brought to London, and the Memorial Scrolls Trust was created to repair, care for, and distribute them throughout the world.

Our Torah

The Mendocino Coast Jewish Community has MCT#809, which was shipped from Sedicany to Prague on September 15th, 1942. Because Sedicany had accepted Torahs from other towns, the community that originally commissioned and used the Torah could also have been one of the surrounding villages, such as Kamýk nad Vltavou or Petrovice. 

MST#809  is in our ark, standing next to the Torah we use for Shabbat services. Although Torah#809 is not technically kosher for use in services, we read from it on special occasions, such as Yom Kippur, to honor, remember, and hold in our hearts the Torah’s original community.

You can see how the years in the warehouse left their mark:

More resources

You can get more information about the Memorial Scrolls Trust, including the communities from all over the world that currently have one of their Holocaust Torahs, on their website.

The Pinkhas Synagogue in Prague has cataloged the names of the people deported from the Czech Lands during the Shoah, along with what is known about their lives and deaths. You can see the list of people who were deported from Sedicany here.