We have on display a Memorial Sefer Torah which has 
come to us from Czechoslovakia.  It is one of 1,564 
scrolls seized from desecrated synagogues by the 
Nazis.  It is believed they were intended to be used 
and displayed after the war in a museum featuring 
'relics of the extinct Jewish race'.  These scrolls 
were found in piles in the disused Michle Synagogue 
in Prague after World War II.  In 1963 they were 
purchased from the Czech Government and taken to 
Westminster Synagogue in London where special racks 
were built to house them. 

While our former president and his wife were in 
London they learned of the scrolls from his home 
city of Prague.  They saw them at the Westminster 
Synagogue and met the scribe, David Brand, who had 
miraculously arrived at the door of that synagogue 
at the right time and asked for work.  Naturally, 
the scribe was greeted with open arms and for 27 
years he and a team of people painstakingly hand 
wrote, corrected and made usable any of the scrolls 
which could be saved. 

These repaired scrolls are now to be found all over 
the world, more often than not in small communities 
which find it difficult to buy scrolls due to lack 
of funds.  It was not feasible to fully restore our 
Scroll, possibly fire-damaged, and so it is not used 
by us in worship.  We have it on display in memory 
of the millions of Jews who died as a result of The 
Holocaust.