Hungarian rabbi finds 103 stolen Torah scrolls in Russia
by Marton Dunai

Reuters    Translate This Article
18 February 2014

* Scrolls stashed in Russian library for 70 years

* Library in Nizhny Novgorod also housed other war loot

* Plans to restore Torah scrolls, take them on world tour

BUDAPEST, Feb 18 (Reuters) - A Hungarian rabbi said on Tuesday he had uncovered 103 Torah scrolls stolen from Hungarian Jews during World War Two and stashed in a Russian library, adding he planned to restore and return them to the Jewish community.

Slomo Koves, chief rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, said he had found the scrolls while following up a previous recovery of Hungarian war loot in the Lenin Scientific Library in Nizhny Novgorod, 400 km (240 miles) east of Moscow.

In 2006, Russia returned to Hungary more than 100 antique books, including some from the 15th century, that had been brought to the same library in Nizhny Novgorod from the Sarospatak Calvinist College in eastern Hungary.

The Torah scrolls, which are still in Russia, have a long way to go until they too can be returned, not the least because Russian authorities have just begun to consider what to do with them, Koves said. He said he wants to restore them anyway, and worry later about where they wind up in a permanent home.

Koves told a press conference in a Budapest synagogue that he had no doubt the Torah scrolls had belonged to Hungarian Jews, although they had been stripped of markings that would indicate their origins clearly.

He showed photographs and videos of the scrolls, some of which he said were centuries old and in poor condition.

He called it an historic find and added that once the scrolls are restored he would try to take them on tour around the world, including to the United States and Israel.

'I think it's the first time in history when such a large collection of Judaica with 100 Torah scrolls in one place was discovered,' Koves said.

'And the fact that those scrolls are from Hungary has a special significance this year, which is the 70th year from 1944 when most Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz.'

CONTINUITY

More than 500,000 Hungarian Jews perished in World War II, most of them deported to concentration camps in a two-month stretch in 1944. Virtually every city in Hungary except Budapest lost nearly all its Jews.

About 100,000 Jews, mostly in the capital, escaped the deportations and today Budapest is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, Koves told Reuters.

'For us, finding these Torah scrolls that were connected to our forefathers has a great significance of showing continuity in this community,' he said.

Koves said Russian restitution law was partial to artefacts that had belonged to religious groups or anti-Nazi groups, so ownership of the scrolls would not be hard to determine, but saving the scrolls was more important than owning them.

'For seven decades they have been laying naked in those archives, while their only value is for a Jewish community to see them and use them every day,' he said.

'We have initiated talks with the Russians, and we asked them that before we even talk about ownership we be allowed to restore them.'

Koves said he had secured the support of the Hungarian government and the U.S. State Department, and that the regional authorities in Nizhny Novgorod were now taking his request to save the scrolls more seriously than before.

'Right now we're not speaking about the ownership of the Torah scrolls because for the Jewish community that's not the most important question. Those Torah scrolls spiritually belong to us and no-one can take it away from us... The most important question is who is going to use these Torah scrolls.'

(Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Michael Roddy and Tom Heneghan)

© Copyright 2014 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency .

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.