Fifty-two more Torah scrolls and megilot will soon be handed over to the Jewish people by Lithuania, following the transfer of 309 previously undiscovered Torah scrolls that took place in January, according to Rabbi Abba Dunner, secretary-general of the Conference of European Rabbis.
The collection of scrolls, between 70 and 90 years old, was part of Nazi loot confiscated from the Jewish community of Lithuania during the Holocaust, which lay in the chapel of St. George Church in Vilnius for more than 50 years.
“I knew they kept the best for themselves, because the quality of the ones they handed over was horrible,” said Dunner. “I discovered that there were 58 more scrolls.”
Negotiations over the remaining scrolls were begun soon after the January ceremony, which included the president, foreign minister, and chairman of the Lithuania parliament, who gave the Torah scrolls to a Jewish-Israeli delegation that included Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Lau, who accepted the scrolls on behalf of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
When negotiations began, “they kept saying that there were nine scrolls they could not identify,” said Dunner. “It turned out they were haftorot and megilot, different parts of Scripture writings. But they kept stalling, telling me that the Torah scrolls were part of ‘Lithuanian Jewish culture.’ Well, I told them that the scrolls weren’t part of the culture, the Jews were. There were 212,000 Lithuanian Jews who were killed, and their relatives are now coming back to claim their belongings. I told them we weren’t moving until the government showed me the rest.”
Dunner said he found in the library vaults “the most beautiful Sifrei Torah and megilot. They didn’t compare to any of the 309 we took out in January.”
Dunner said the head of the library was reluctant to release them, but after three months of negotiations, “we decided to bring pressure from the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, and the Conference of European Rabbis,” three of the groups that made up an ad-hoc committee formed last July among various representatives of world Jewry, including the Israeli government, Menorah, and Hechal Shlomo.
“Within two months [of the renewed pressure], 52 Torah scrolls came out,” said Dunner. “We left six behind for the Jews of Lithuania. And when this is all over, we’re going into the library to check their stacks. There have got to be hundreds of thousands of seforim [religious books] in a country that was recognized before the Shoah as the bedrock of Jewish learning. These books have to come back to their rightful home.”
Ten of the scrolls are in very good condition, two are in poor condition and the rest are haftorot and megilot — including Eicha, Esther and Ruth — 90 percent of which can be brought up to kosher standards, according to Dunner.
Of the scrolls handed over in January, none of which were kosher, 31 were complete scrolls, 70 partial scrolls, and the rest megilot of Bible parchment fragments.
January’s ceremony concluded six years of protracted discussions and external pressure on the Lithuanian government that involved the Israeli government, numerous Israeli, European, and U.S. organizations, and even President Bush.
The saga of the scrolls began six years ago, when the large collection was discovered in the church.
“The Torah scrolls were lying there naked, with mice droppings and dust and dirt, lying there piled on each other,” Rabbi Shalom Krinsky, the Chabad rabbi of Vilnius, said in January.
The entire worldwide Jewish community attempted to claim rightful ownership of the collection, and the internal bickering led to the long delay in obtaining the scrolls.
Three years ago, the Conference of European Rabbis was invited by the Lithuanian government to examine the scrolls and suggest an acceptable solution.
Not everyone is happy with the transfer of the Torah scrolls. Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that while the transfer is good for the Jewish people, “no one should think that this can in any way substitute for the prosecution of those who murdered Jews during the Shoah. Now is the only time that this prosecution can be done, and if it’s not done, it will be a historic tragedy, both for Lithuania and for the Jewish people, and will continue to cast an ominous shadow over Lithuanian-Jewish relations.”