Members of Ogden’s Jewish congregation view a Torah that survived the Holocaust. Credit: Ramin Rahimian, Standard-Examiner
By JaNae Francis (Standard-Examiner staff)
Apr 23, 2010
OGDEN — The memory of 6 million men, women and children killed during the Holocaust received special honor last weekend when members of Ogden’s Jewish Congregation Brith Sholem used a Torah scroll that survived the devastation for their Yom HaShoah memorial service.
It was the first time the relic from World War II has come to the Ogden congregation.
While Jewish congregations work hard to keep in good repair their Torah scrolls that feature roughly the Old Testament written in Hebrew, this scroll showed signs of obvious wear and tear.
That’s because it was a remnant of many Torah scrolls buried by rabbis in a burial ground during that time of devastation in order to keep their scared writings from desecration at the hands of the Nazis.
The scroll consisted of sewn together parts of these scrolls that were unearthed by those living in a Jewish concentration camp who were allowed to leave for work duty from the Yanov concentration camp in Poland.
The prisoners would visit the burial ground, dig up the buried scrolls and cut parts of them out and smuggle them back into camp for their fellow prisoners to read and study.
“They risked their lives every time they would do this,” said student Rabbi Aron Klein, who read from the scroll during last weekend’s services.
“They knew they would be killed even if they were caught praying.”
Klein told a story of Ludovic Wurmfeld, a prisoner at the Yanov camp.
“Because he was deaf, the Nazi guards thought he was dim-witted, and he was allowed to leave the work camp regularly because the guards did not perceive him as a threat,” Klein said.
“Every time Ludovic returned from the town, he was wrapped in the words of Torah,” he said. “Columns of Torah were curled around his legs and sewn into his jacket.”
Wurmfeld’s efforts may have brought comfort to others at that time, but years later, they returned solace to him.
After the Holocaust ended, poor Jewish people gathered the pieces of Torah scrolls together and sewed them into a complete Torah.
This scroll at first was passed down to family members of those who had rescued the sacred writings but eventually the scroll made its way to the United States and came to be under the direction of Rabbi Erwin Herman.
“Twenty some years ago, Rabbi Herman took this Torah to Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in Los Angeles,” Klein said. “As Rabbi Herman was talking about the Torah, a man from the congregation stood up in the middle of the rabbi’s address and began walking toward the Torah.
“As he approached, in sign language he said over and over again, ‘That’s my Torah. That’s my Torah.’ “
That man was Wurmfeld.
Klein encouraged those at the remembrance service to also learn to follow their faith through unimaginable journeys from darkness to light.
“With each journey, like the Yanov Torah, we acquire new physical and spiritual scars that we carry with us forever,” he said. “These scars are the reminders both of our fragile faith and the need to mend it.”
Klein said experiencing the Yanov Torah reminds people of the courage, strength and enduring faith of those who previously took care of it.
“May their legacy inspire us to journey inward to discover our own courage, summon our own strength, and fortify our own faith and our tradition, which is sewn together with the threads of beauty and struggle,” he said. “Through our journeys, through our brokenness, and through our attempts at repair, we too will be able to stand up, carry close our fragile faith and say, ‘That’s my Torah. That’s my Torah.’ “
Thanks to Washington Society for Jewish Deaf (WSJD).
