Central’s century-old Torah
GEORGE Klas wore his grandfather’s tallit when he handed over a century-old Torah to Central Synagogue last Shabbat.
GEORGE Klas wore his grandfather’s tallit when he handed over a century-old Torah to Central Synagogue last Shabbat.
Klas, who lives in New York, spent many years living in Australia and said he wanted to donate an old European Torah to the shul so congregants would remember those who died in the Holocaust.
“It was amazing to be able to give this scroll to the shul where I was bar mitzvahed, wearing my grandfather’s tallit and in the presence of my 97-year-old mother Rose,” 71-year-old Klas said.
Klas was born in England, from where his parents fled during the Holocaust, but never met his grandfather who died in Auschwitz.
“It was a very special moment to wear the tallit that was passed down to me.
“I was speaking to my grandfather while I was standing there in front of the scroll,” Klas said.
The Torah, from Pribram in Czechoslovakia, was first given to an Australian congregation in 1979.
It is one of the 1564 scrolls from Czechoslovakia that was taken by the Nazis and later saved by the Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST).
In 1983, the rabbi who held the Torah left Australia and entrusted it to one of his friends, who kept it in his garage.
In 2009, the Australian representative of the MST, Dr Joseph Toltz, found it and put it in the Emanuel Synagogue, along with three other scrolls from the trust.
When Toltz was contacted by Klas he said he was happy to give it to Central Synagogue. “It’s an appropriate place for the scroll because many Jews from Czechoslovakia contributed to the congregation after the war,” Toltz explained.
JOSHUA LEVI
George Klas, holding the Torah that was seized by the Nazis in 1939 and wearing his grandfather’s tallit, with his 97-year-old mother Rose and his sister Miriam.
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