(Jewish Group) Sections of lost Torah scroll reappear in a German town 83 years after Kristallnacht

Sections of lost Torah scroll reappear in a German town 83 years after Kristallnacht disappearance

A German Protestant minister has handed over segments of a long lost Torah scroll to the city of Görlitz in southeast Germany, 83 years after his father, a town policeman, came into possession of them.

While it is not unheard of for German non-Jews to turn over religious objects that have been lost or hidden since the Nazi period, the Torah scroll fragments took an unusually circuitous journey before coming to light last week.

The Torah had not been seen since Kristallnacht, the pogrom against synagogues and Jewish property in German-speaking lands on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.

According to Pastor Uwe Mader, 79, the minister who turned the fragments over to the town, the story began with his father, Willi Mader. Born in Görlitz in 1914, Willi was a young police officer in training when he was called to the synagogue on the night of the anti-Jewish pogrom.

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