Sefer Torah Survives Lodz Ghetto, Brought to Israel

A 150-year-old sefer Torah marked for destruction in the city of Lodz has been saved and brought to the northern Israeli town of Kfar Haro’eh, The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.

The scroll was discovered inside a shack in the Polish city on a street that was part of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust. The Jewish residents hid it in the ghetto for use on Shabbos and Chagim.

The Lodz municipality was planning to tear down some old wooden shacks that belonged to the Jewish community. The scroll was found hidden inside a wall, along with other Jewish artifacts.

The sefer Torah was transported to the Shem Olam Holocaust Institute, established in 1996 in Kfar Haro’eh by Rabbi Avraham Krieger.

“This is a historical finding and a rare piece of life from the ghetto that survived until today,” Rabbi Krieger said.

“The Poles continue to suppress our history. These lone wooden shacks left on the Lodz Ghetto streets were going to be demolished and the only evidence left in Poland of what happened in the Holocaust was going to be erased.”

Lodz was Poland’s second largest city and a major industrial center. The ghetto there was established in April 1940 and became the second-largest ghetto created by the Nazis. About 164,000 Jews were held there before it was finally liquidated toward the end of 1944.