Plainview Synagogue Restores Holocaust Torah

Plainview’s is welcoming 480 new members, instantly doubling the size of its community. There’s plenty of room for these new souls; the only space they will occupy is in our hearts.

Their names will be remembered now. Names like Pavel Arnstein, the young son of a food wholesaler. Or Frantisek Aschermann, a young lawyer, just starting out.

They are mothers and fathers, little children and old couples. There was the cantor, Richard Reichner, and his wife Riva. There were three sisters: Ida, Maria and Olga Adlerova. And young Milan Kornfeld, born in 1943 in the Terezin camp.

The Nazis wiped out all of them, the entire Kolin congregation of 480 and millions more in the Holocaust of World War II. They robbed Kolin's Jews of everything: their wedding days, bar and bat mitzvahs, even the Kaddish prayers to commemorate their deaths. But Hitler couldn’t take their names or destroy the sacred Torah that was part of the small Czech community for 150 years.

G-d and decent people had other plans.

That Torah, which sat in a display case for 36 years, is being meticulously restored by an expert known as a sofer. It will soon have a permanent home in Plainview, a living testament that the Children of Israel still exist. The names of Kolin’s murdered Jews are already home here, adopted by a united Jewish community determined to see this story passed down through the generations.

"The synagogue in Kolin sits empty now," said Rabbi David Senter, the leader of the congregation in Plainview. "Had they survived their names would have lived on. A Torah is a ritual icon; by taking it on and preserving their Torah, we are the custodians of their legacy."

A Torah is written to be a part of a synagogue, to share the words of G-d," said Judy Nitkin, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. "It's not to be enshrined as a museum piece."

The remarkable story begins in Kolin, a suburb of Prague, where a Jewish community thrived for 600 years. Their Torah, a primary text containing the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible and hand-written in Hebrew, is at least 150 years old.

It was stolen, like thousands of others, by the Nazis as they attempted to implement their "Final Solution:" The extermination of Europe's Jews.

"Hitler's goal was to make the Jews an extinct race," Senter said. "He wanted to put this Torah in a museum as a relic of a lost people. We make a statement here and now that he did not succeed. And we must teach this lesson to our children."

In June 1942, the Nazis looted the synagogue and deported the entire Jewish community of Kolin to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. The ritual items were shipped off to Hitler's planned museum. Kolin's Torah, witness to generations of life events in Kolin, from baby namings to funerals, was one of more than 1,500 warehoused in Prague. 

The 480 from Kolin, shopkeepers and teachers, doctors and lawyers, mothers and their children, ranging in age from 6-90, were sent to Terezin in three shipments.

These people had names. 

• The tailor, Karel Gruenhut, and his wife, Karolina.
• Sara Moravcova, a doctor, and husband Herman.
• Jan and Julie, the teenage children of Franta Parkus, the coal merchant.
• Rudolf Glaser, the chocolate maker, and his wife Vilma.

There are so many more. All gone. Who will say Kaddish for them?

There were 168 who died in the Terezin work camp. The rest were sent east to the concentration camps. No one from Kolin survived. They were among the more than 2,000 Jews of Czechoslovakia -- 96 percent of the Czech population -- who would die at the hands of the Nazis. Six million Jews and other innocents died at their hands.

After the war, a London art dealer purchased the stolen Torah scrolls from the Czech government in 1964 and were later donated to the Westminster Synagogue in London. The Czech Torah Network trust was established to permanently loan the scrolls to Jewish communities around the world.

One of those was the Manetto Hill Jewish Center, which purchased a separate seat on a jet to transport Scroll No. 559 from London to New York in 1974. Until last year, that Torah sat in a glass case in the center's lobby, a silent memorial to a decimated community.

On Aug. 1 Senter was named Manetto Hill's new rabbi. On his first visit to Plainview, Senter remarked that the Holocaust Torah in the case was meant to be used. It was an epiphany, a galvanizing moment, said Harvey Cohen, the publicity director for the Center. It brought the entire community together with a singular purpose.

Not long after, the Holocaust Torah was removed from its protective case and unrolled. A specialist was on hand, Rabbi Joachin Salazar Loewe, a scribe (or "sofer") trained at restoring (or kashering) the sacred texts. Loewe determined that while some of the lettering had been damaged, the Torah could be restored. The community rejoiced.

On Yom Kippur, the Torah was carried through the congregation and placed in the Aron Kodesh, the ark that holds the synagogue's other Torahs. The community vowed to be guardian of living Torah No. 559 and to perpetuate the memory of the 480 Jews of Kolin.

Money was raised by the congregation for the restoration. An expert in Miami is currently repairing the damaged lettering and words, which Jews believe date back to the time of Moses and contain G-d's laws.

It fell to Nitkin, whose parents survived Nazi work camps, to take the next and most grueling step, a meticulous search for the names of Kolin's dead. She pored over documents, got up in the middle of the night to make phone calls to Europe and Israel. One by one she found them. The Nazis kept good records, particularly of those they killed. The names of the dead were left behind. 

Nitkin has compiled a list of 466 names of Kolin's Jews. There is the dressmaker Emilie Pickova and typographer Karel Pick. Or No. 407 on the list: little Hana Sidlofova, described as a "school girl." She would have been 7 in 1942.

You can view their names, all 466 of them here.

All the names will be inscribed on a new wimpel, the cloth covering placed over a Torah, thus linking them to their beloved scroll forever. In that way the Jews of Kolin can be a living part of every naming ceremony, or stand witness when a couple stands in marriage beneath a chuppah.

The effort has united an already close community, said Sue Moskowitz. "Our sages teach that who ever sets out to perform a good deed must be told, 'complete what you have begun.'... Each of us can now complete the mitvzah {act of kindness.}"

The restored Torah will be rededicated at the synagogue on May 1.   

Nitkin still hopes to find the names of 14 other known victims whose identities are unknown, because names hold a special place in the hearts of the Jewish community.

"When ever I hear my grandson's name, I think of my father," Rabbi Senter said. "In many was a person lives on in the our memory when it is triggered by a name."

Nitkin fought tears when asked what her parents would have thought of this project: "My father lost his entire family," she said. "They would have thought this was wonderful."

"We wondered, who would say Kaddish for them," Senter said of Kolin's Jews.

The Manetto Hill Jewish Center answered in one voice:

"We will."

You can contribute to the cause of memorializing Kolin's Jews; $118 is the cost to sponsor one of the names on the wimpel. Checks can be made to the Manetto Hill Jewish Center, Plainview NY  11803.

Editor's note: This article intentionally uses a hyphenated version of G-d out of respect for a Jewish tradition.