Israel, and Jews all round the world, are commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. It ought to be more than a sombre reminder of man's inhumanity to man - although, all to sadly, nothing has been learned from the horrific events of the Holocaust as we still see genocide is practiced around the world. Think Darfur and the killing fields of Cambodia as but two examples. The cry at the end of WWII of "never again" certainly rings hollow.
The NY Times reports in "From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit" on a remarkable sequence of occurrences which, fittingly, bear on rememberance and the horrors of the Holocaust:
"The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.”
It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it — four carefully chosen panels — into the concentration camp.
It is the story of a Polish Catholic priest to whom they entrusted the four panels before their deaths. It is the story of a Maryland rabbi who went looking for it with a metal detector. And it is the story of how a hunch by the rabbi’s 13-year-old son helped lead him to it."
The NY Times reports in "From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit" on a remarkable sequence of occurrences which, fittingly, bear on rememberance and the horrors of the Holocaust:
"The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.”
It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it — four carefully chosen panels — into the concentration camp.
It is the story of a Polish Catholic priest to whom they entrusted the four panels before their deaths. It is the story of a Maryland rabbi who went looking for it with a metal detector. And it is the story of how a hunch by the rabbi’s 13-year-old son helped lead him to it."
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