This is the
story of a citizen of a lost Jewish community in the Czech Republic who-with
help from members of the U.S. Congress, no less-returned home for a visit
and was received with wild enthusiasm by the residents of a town where no
Jews survived.
It's also
the story of the bond that grew between members of a Chicago synagogue and
the non-Jewish residents of a small European town, a town whose children
even today mourn and honor their Jewish neighbors who perished in the
Holocaust.
Participants in this drama call it unique, incredibly powerful, life
changing.
But the
star player can't say anything- not directly, anyway-because the citizen who
returned for a brief visit home is a Torah.
The
story-the modern part of it anyway- really begins in 1967 when Rabbi Robert
Marx, then the Reform movement's regional director for the Midwest, helped a
congregation in Beloit, Wis. apply for a Holocaust Torah from London's
Westminster Synagogue.
Under a
complex deal involving the Czech government, a prominent British art dealer
and a London Jewish philanthropist, that synagogue in 1963 had become the
repository for more than 1,500 Torah scrolls the Nazis had confiscated from
synagogues in then- Czechoslovakia. The scrolls, many of them in poor
condition, were repaired, then an organization, the Czech Memorial Scrolls
Trust, was formed to find new homes for the ones that were able to travel.
One of
the Torahs found its way to Rabbi Marx, but by that time the congregation it
was supposed to go to had folded. Marx kept it until 1984, when he founded
Congregation Hakafa in Glencoe. There the Torah has reposed ever since, used
only once a year, on Yom Kippur, for the reading of the Holiness Code, read
in the afternoon just before the Yizkor service. (Many congregations that
possess so-called Holocaust Torahs use them only on the most solemn
occasions out of deference for the Jews who perished.)
Things
might have stayed that way had Rabbi Bruce Elder, now Hakafa's spiritual
leader, not received a call two years ago from Dr. Stanton Canter, a
California man who had traveled through the Czech Republic several years
before.
During
those travels Canter came across a small town called Lostice in the Moravia
region and was astounded to discover that, although there had been no Jews
there since they were rounded up by the Nazis around 1939, the non- Jewish
residents had maintained the town's Jewish cemetery and repaired an old
synagogue.
Why? "The
non-Jewish community had such warm feelings toward the Jewish community
because there had been harmonious relationships for 350 years," Elder
relates.
Canter
joined with a local man, Ludek Shteipel, to form a foundation, Respect and
Tolerance, designed to teach those very virtues, along with the history of
the town, to local schoolchildren.
He also
continued researching the history of Lostice (pronounced Lo-STEECH-a) and
was able to trace Hakafa's Torah back to it.
At almost
the same time the citizens of Lostice had been putting the finishing touches
on the rebuilt synagogue and were beginning research to find out where
"their" Torah ended up. It was just one of many coincidences connected with
the trip.
Canter
called Rabbi Elder to ask if, for the town's 450th anniversary celebration,
he could take a picture of the Torah and send it to the mayor. Elder did so,
and the picture, along with a letter the rabbi sent, now hangs in a place of
honor on the wall of the old synagogue, where the anniversary celebration
was held.
The mayor,
Dr. Ctirad Lolek, was thrilled-and sent Elder and his congregants an
invitation to visit Lostice. Two years later, they accepted.
Elder,
himself the son of a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, decided after
corroborating the information that the Torah's provenance was authentic that
"it would be a real powerful thing to take our Torah back"-but only for a
visit, as it was not needed in a town where there are no longer any Jews.
The
decision to bring the Torah back to its home was occasioned by "all the
voices that cry out from it that don't have the opportunity to come back. We
had the opportunity to bring them back to their synagogue," he says. In
addition, it would be a way to thank the non-Jews of Lostice for maintaining
the memories and memorials of their Jewish neighbors.
The
occasion would mark the first worship service held in the Lostice synagogue
in more than 60 years and, as it turned out, the first time a Czech Torah
has returned to its homeland.
The rabbi,
along with 16 congregants, began making plans for the trip. But there was a
problem. How to transport the Torah, which is nearly five feet tall and
weighs 125 pounds?
There was
no seat available for the scroll on the plane the congregants were taking,
and besides, "it wasn't feasible to be shlepping it on a plane," Elder says.
"It's in very good shape but it is 200 years old and is fragile. It had to
go through Customs, and we needed a way to get it over there safely."
He
wondered whether it could be shipped through a "diplomatic pouch," a form of
transport the U.S. government uses to send items to its embassies, and
contacted U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky's office to find out.
Schakowsky, who is Jewish and whose district includes Chicago's northern
suburbs, "took (the problem) and ran with it," Elder says, calling her "an
amazing, unbelievable person. Without asking, she took all these steps to
find a way to get the Torah there safely," he says.
For her
part, Schakowsky says, "I was thrilled to be asked to be involved. Nothing
like this had ever been done successfully with the Czech Republic."
She first
contacted the U.S. ambassador in Prague, who recommended against using a
diplomatic pouch. Schakowsky then assigned a legislative assistant, Robert
Marcus, to the problem and together they contacted Rep. Tom Lantos, himself
a Holocaust survivor and the ranking Democrat on the International Relations
Committee. Marcus is a Wilmette native whose family members belong to
Congregation Hakafa.
Lantos
recommended using the shipping company DHL, which is owned by a friend of
his and, he noted, has expertise in shipping valuable objects. The firm "not
only offered their help but really went out of their way," Schakowsky says,
flying the Torah for free on a chartered flight, then coordinating its
arrival with the U.S. State Department and the U.S. embassy in Prague.
"Everyone
who heard the story was touched and moved and looked for ways to be helpful,
to be part of this very exciting, moving historic event," Schakowsky says.
Elder
noticed that reaction too. "The coordinating that went on to get the Torah
there and back was amazing," he says. So was "the outpouring of support,
people rallying around this object. It's just an object but it represents so
much more so many people."
Finally
the Torah arrived and on Friday, June 17, so did the 16-member delegation
from Hakafa, plus Marcus, Schakowsky's legislative aide, who became so
caught up in the drama that he arranged his vacation so that he could go
along.
Even after
the exchange of letters with the town's mayor, Elder says, the congregants
were unprepared for what awaited them in Lostice. Some 150 people-mostly
non-Jews from the town, but a few Jews from surrounding areas- turned out to
greet them at the town hall, where the mayor and community leaders waited.
In addition a handful of Jews from Prague, 80 miles away, had heard about
the event and traveled to Lostice to be a part of it.
The crowd
traveled with the Hakafa delegation through the streets of the city to the
synagogue, where the Torah was placed in the Ark for the first time since
the late 1930s.
A number
of reporters were present as well, and the visit was well covered in the
Czech press, with stories appearing in every major newspaper under headlines
like "The synagogue revived by worship" and "The 19th-century Lostice Torah
is back."
In the
synagogue, meanwhile, the Chicagoans found a number of benches as well as
parts of stained glass windows from a synagogue at the nearby town of
Olomouc that was completely destroyed by the Nazis. After the war, survivors
found some of the benches; rescued them and installed them in a local church
as a Holocaust memorial.
Then, with
financial help from Jews all over the world, including Congregation Hakafa,
the respect and Tolerance Foundation acquired the benches and installed them
-- 21 seats in all-in the Lostice synagogue. Each seat is dedicated to an
individual, including the rabbi of the Olomouc synagogue, who perished at
Treblinka; Rabbi Elder; and Elie Wiesel, who is an honorary member of the
foundation.
The
Lostice synagogue had fared better than its neighbor, but not by much. It,
too, had been partially destroyed by Nazi troops, with some walls knocked
down and other parts burned. After the war, the citizens of the town decided
to rebuild it as a tribute to the Jewish neighbors they had lost. They found
the ancient blueprints in the town hall and used them to reconstruct the
synagogue. The blueprints now hang on its wall in a frame.
Marcus
found that bit of enterprise amazing. "This was not a wealthy town," he
says, "and they did this anyway even though there were no Jews there."
In this
setting, the ceremonies began with a Shabbat service during which the Torah
was, for the first time since it originally left Lostice, unscrolled to the
portion of the week, which Elder and other congregants read to a packed
audience.
The
Lostice mayor and other community leaders participated as well, along with a
representative of the Prague Jewish community and one from the U.S. embassy.
A children's choir from the town had learned Jewish songs for the occasion
and sang them at the service.
"To hear 'Sholom
Aleichem' in beautiful three-part harmony in a synagogue that hadn't had
Jewish voices in it for years-it was impossible not to be transformed by
it," Elder says. "The walls were crying, we were all crying. The Torah
represents so much-the human will to rise above hatred. We all came away
very different people. It touched each of us individually, so deeply, so
profoundly."
One of
those who was affected was Hakafa congregant Judith Joseph, who was marking
exactly 36 years (or as she says, "double chai") since her own bat
mitzvah-so the parsha was the same one as hers. Only then she, like other
girls and women, had not been allowed to read from the Torah. Instead, she
did so at Lostice.
"For the
first time in my life I got to chant my Torah portion," Joseph says. "It was
so thrilling to chant Torah in that building where it hadn't been chanted in
60 years. I felt like it was such a privilege."
For Jerry
Friedman, one of the founding members of Hakafa and its first president, the
highlight of the trip was "the first moment, bringing the Torah and placing
it in the Ark, then being able to hold a service there in a room packed with
people from the town. That was very moving."
After the
service the congregants spread the Torah out on a table and mingled with the
guests at a reception, which also included an exhibit of Jewish art that the
Respect and Tolerance Foundation had hung on the synagogue walls.
"For an
hour and a half, people walked past the Torah, looking at it and taking
pictures of it," Friedman reports. "They didn't want to leave."
Marcus
says he will never forget "the look in the people's eyes when we brought the
Torah in. They knew this is a treasure. The rabbi asked the mayor if he
would like to hold it and he was so honored and so scared-he didn't want to
drop it."
He, too,
was impressed with the "hundreds of people who lined up to look at the
Torah. The look on their faces-this was part of their town, their history.
It was very touching."
Despite
the language barrier "there was a lot of hugging and handshaking," Marcus
recalls. He adds that although some of the older people were mourning
townspeople they had known who were lost in the Holocaust, much younger
people, even the children, seemed to "get it" too.
"It was so
amazing-they were really understanding the significance of this," he says.
"I've never heard of another story where people in a town have gone out of
their way to rebuild and maintain a synagogue, to keep the (Jewish) cemetery
intact."
After the
services Lolek, the Lostice mayor, invited the Chicago delegation back to
his office, where he proudly served a cheese made in the region and poured a
strong, vodka-like drink, made from plums and also produced locally. When he
found out that one congregant, Jerry Friedman, is a former mayor (Friedman
was the mayor of Northbrook 24 years ago), "he insisted I have another, then
he got somebody to take our picture," Friedman relates.
The visit
ended for the Chicagoans with a trip to a 13th-century castle just outside
of the town. The Nazis had once used it for their regional headquarters, but
now it held an exhibit documenting the history of the Jewish community of
Lostice, put together by the director of the Respect and Tolerance
Foundation.
He had
also engaged an Irish violin and piano duo, flying them in to play Jewish
music (although the musicians are non-Jews) interspersed with Jewish poetry
at the close of Shabbat.
For Elder,
"sitting in this room, hearing this music in the very room where Nazis used
to listen to Wagner while planning to deport Jews, was such an incredible
experience."
Indeed,
Elder says that for everyone who participated, the trip was "life-
changing."
Some, like
Joseph, have kept up and deepened the connections they made. An artist who
specializes in ketubot (wedding certificates), she met an artist from
Lostice and they began working on arranging a joint exhibition together in a
nearby town. In addition, the non-Jewish Czech artist began making a Jewish
calendar and sought Joseph's help in writing the names of the months in
Hebrew.
Beyond
that, "I learned something," Joseph says. "I never really appreciated the
cultural loss to these European communities when their Jews were eliminated.
I was raised to think the gentiles were willing participants, and in some
cases they were." But in Lostice, and perhaps other towns too, "they felt a
terrible loss," she says. "Now they are teaching their kids about it and
using that to promote respect and tolerance."
Discovering that was "unbelievable," Joseph says. "I was filled with a
mixture of sorrow that the Jewish community was completely absent and just
being amazed that the gentiles of the town were making this huge effort to
document and educate about the Jewish heritage."
The trip
"was two days, but it's continued to blossom for me in terms of my
connecting with people who are promoting something really good in the
world," she says.
Friedman
says it's not just the participants, but even those who didn't go along who
were impacted. "The synagogue has been very touched by the whole
experience," he says. "The entire synagogue, they want to know more about
it. Every time we have services people are constantly asking abut the trip,
about our experiences."
For
Marcus, who has studied the Holocaust academically, "this was absolutely
unique-a town in central Europe that has really embraced the lessons of the
Holocaust and is going out of its way to understand." Shteipel, the respect
and Tolerance Foundation director, "is going around the country teaching the
Holocaust to children in public schools who don't even know what the
Holocaust is, and they're listening. It's so rare that the lessons of the
Holocaust-never forget-are actually being applied here," he says.
Schakowsky, he adds, participated vicariously even though her legislative
duties prevented her from taking the trip. "From the day the rabbi
approached Jan she was so thrilled, she was checking in on this every day,"
he says. "There was such a sense of accomplishment and pride when we finally
got it wrapped up."
For her
part, Schakowsky says she sensed that the visit "had this huge educational
impact. It was so loaded with emotion, not like reading it in a textbook. I
had a sense of that, the potential, when Rabbi Elder called." She says she
is grateful to Elder for "engaging so many people, governments, people's
hearts, the significance of how much this would mean to the people of the
little community and beyond."
Elder
himself continues to be amazed by "the stories, the connections- incredible
layers of them. You throw a rock into a river and it creates a ripple effect
and you have no idea. The ripples just keep going."
That's
certainly true of the Lostice story. Currently Czech filmmakers are working
on a documentary about the community, and the story of the Torah's return
will be a part of it. In addition the Westminster Synagogue in London, which
is still involved with distributing Czech Torahs all over the world, plans
to use the story of the Lostice Torah as a paradigm for reconnecting the
past and present of lost Jewish communities.
The
Respect and Tolerance Foundation is continuing to gather information about
the Jews of Lostice and two surrounding towns and will eventually show their
findings to the public through an exhibition and possibly a book.
"History
of Jewish settlement in our region goes back to the 15th century, but very
little attention has been given to this subject so far," foundation director
Shteipel writes in an e-mail explaining the organization's work. "The
history of the Jewish communities in the Lostice area until the Nazi
occupation is a story of peaceful coexistence of Jewish and Christian
inhabitants. There is plenty of evidence that in the period before World War
II, Jews were fully integrated into the society and took vital part in
cultural and social life of their towns," he writes.
The work
the foundation is doing, he continues, "can be used as evidence that
tolerant coexistence of people with different religious and racial
backgrounds was, and is, possible. In our divided world such a message is
still essential and very important." He closes with a quote from Elie Wiesel:
"To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all."
Robert
Marcus, too, believes that the Lostice trip "can be used to reconnect other
little towns with other American communities. I've never heard of one like
this before," he says. "This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
And he
speaks for everyone involved in the journey when he says, "I want people to
know that even with the rise of anti-Semitism in the world, there are
opportunities to rekindle the lessons of the Holocaust." |