Among the Torah scrolls housed at Congregation Beth El in Tyler
is a scroll with a special history — one of only 1,564 that were
rescued from a Nazi warehouse after World War II. The scroll
kept at Beth El is from the town of Roudnice Nad Labem in
Czechoslovakia. Another scroll from the same community is kept
by a congregation in San Diego. The more than 1,500 scrolls were
discovered by an American art dealer who was friends with the
rabbi of the Westminster Synagogue in London. He and other
benefactors rescued the scrolls from poor storage conditions in
Communist-controlled Prague after the war and took the scrolls
to the Westminster Synagogue in London. “After months of
sorting, examining and cataloguing each Scroll, the task of
distributing them began, with the aim of getting the Scrolls
back into the life of Jewish congregations across the world,”
according to a document written on the history of the project.
“The Memorial Scrolls Trust was established to carry out this
task. Each Memorial Scroll is a mes