In 1967 Central Synagogue welcomed a surviving Sefer Torah rescued from the Holocaust.  A dedication ceremony was held for the scroll whose origins reside in Lipnik, Czechoslovakia.

The Sefer Torah number 866 which this certificate accompanies is one of the 1564 Czech Memorial Sifre Torah which formed part of the treasures which were saved by being collected in Prague during the Nazi occupation 1939 - 1945 from the desolated Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and which then came under the control of the Czechoslovak Government for many years. The Scrolls were acquired,with the help of good friends, from Artia ( the Czechoslovak State Cultural Agency) for Westminster Synagogue, where they arrived on the 7th February 1964.

Some of the collection remain in the MST’s Czech Memorial Scrolls Museum at Westminster Synagogue, a permanent memorial to the martyrs from whose synagogues they come; many of them are distributed throughout the world, to be memorials every­where to the Jewish tragedy, and to spread light as harbingers of future brotherhood on earth; and all of them bear witness to the glory of the holy Name.

Our Scroll came from Lipnik and was written at the beginning of the 19th Century. For more information, you can visit http://www.memorialscrollstrust.org