The night of Nov. 9, 1938 was dubbed "Kristallnacht" or "The Night of Broken Glass" in Nazi Germany.
Kristallnacht was an eerie foreshadowing of the Holocaust, which eventually claimed the lives of more than 6 million Jews. On that night, hundreds of synagogues were attacked, thousands of torah scrolls destroyed.
In that melee, as flames raged in the main synagogue in Hamburg, a 14-year-old boy, Isaac Schwartz, who had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah a month earlier, charged toward the conflagration of burning relics and grabbed one torah scroll.
That 110-year-old scroll will make an appearance in North Jersey as part of a tour that includes hundreds of Jewish communities worldwide.
Rabbi Mendy Gurkov said he hopes the torah, a piece of Jewish history, will inspire the many faithful who attend the center’s Yom Kippur services at Chabad Jewish Center Upper Passaic County on Wednesday, September 19.
"This torah truly captures the essence of our people," he said. "Many have sought to destroy the Jewish people, but we’ve miraculously survived and we must continue our mission of repairing this world and revealing the light within it. The fact that this torah will be with us on Yom Kippur captures this message of light, of hope and the promise of a brighter tomorrow."
During Kristallnacht – and later during the Holocaust — torahs, which contain the five books of Moses and are the most sacred objects in Judaism, were prime targets for Nazis, Gurkov said.
In the small town of Fritzlar in Germany, Nazi youth stretched torah scrolls out on the streets and rode their bikes over the parchment. In Vienna, Jews were forced to wear the scrolls over their backs. In Hamburg, they were forced at gunpoint to tear the scrolls and toss them in the fire. In Berlin, Nazis made a bonfire with the torahs and danced around it.
"They believed that if they desecrated what we hold most sacred, they could destroy our soul," Gurkov said. "But, that didn’t happen."
The Kristallnacht torah, which had been buried in the backyard of the Schwartz residence in Hamburg right before the family escaped to Venezuela, was further damaged when the family unearthed it after their return home years later.
"Even if one letter is smudged or faded, the torah is rendered useless," Gurkov said.
So, the scroll stayed with the family until three years ago, when Isaac Schwartz’s son contacted Leonard Wien. The Miami Beach businessman who has made it his mission to restore destroyed German torah scrolls as an homage to his family members and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust, bought it from the family and had it restored.
Wien hired two scribes who spent 18 months painstakingly rewriting the faded letters and replacing parts of the parchment that were beyond repair. In some of the parchment, the burn marks are still visible.
Wein donated the Kristallnacht torah that Schwartz rescued and he restored, to the Jewish Learning Institute. It now travels around the country revealing its history and offering hope and inspiration to those who come to see it.
"I’ve seen this torah have such a profound effect on people," Wien said. "It is proof of how Germans took their fury out on the torahs — our most sacred symbols — before they started killing the people."
The Kristallnacht torah will be on display and read from at 11:30 a.m. on Yom Kippur, Wednesday, September 19 at Chabad Jewish Center Upper Passaic County, 1069 Ringwood Avenue, Suite 315, in Haskell, N.J. For more information about this free event email [email protected] or call 201.696.7609.
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