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The Jewish Community Center
of West Pasco
Home of Congregation Beth Tefillah
Czech Republic Holocaust Torah
The Jewish Community is honored to be entrusted with a Torah from Lostice, Moravia from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in the United Kingdom. This Torah is said to have been written in 1800. Lostice was 40 miles east of Prague.
Clicking this link http://www.memorialscrollstrust.org you can read about the history of this special Torah. Go to the Link "Scroll Origin Towns". Below the Map there is a list of all the Czech Towns, scroll down the left hand column with all the alphabetized English towns and locate Lostice, Moravia.
This and many other Religious items were collected by the Jewish Museum of Prague after World War II and from the Museum the Scrolls were transferred and warehoused in the ruined Synagogue at Michle outside of Prague where they remained until they came to London and the Memorial Scrolls Trust Organization 1964. The Trust has placed these priceless Torahs in Synagogues all over the World.
Jews have lived in Bohemia and Moravia for more than a thousand years, and over that time a rich Jewish culture developed. As in most European countries, those Jewish communities were alternatively welcomed and expelled over the centuries and life was precarious. By the middle of the 19th Century they no longer suffered from residential, demographic or occupational restrictions.
Following the Munich Agreement of 29 September 1938, the Sudetenland was absorbed into Germany and their Jews expelled. Virtually all the synagogues and ritual artifacts in the Sudetenland, as in Germany, were totally destroyed in the November 1938 Pogrom.
The Nazis invaded Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, causing little destruction, possibly as they wished to benefit from the Czech armaments industry. However, the Nazis immediately took over Jewish businesses and property, forcing the congregations to close, and, as elsewhere, using the Jewish community administration to enforce their demands and decrees.
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