Here is Rabbi Andrew Goldstein's description of a journey he and members of his London synagogue took. Our Czech Holocaust Torah scroll is also from Kolin, and groups from BJBE have worshipped in that sanctuary in '94 and'96, though in smaller numbers than mentioned here. I think that all BJBE members, who are possessors of a Kolin scroll, will find this a memorable report - Mark S. Shapiro
Rabbi Andrew Goldstein
November 1, 1996
Has ever a Torah scroll and a choir and a theatre group and a rabbi and a congregation made such a Jewish pilgrimage?
The Torah scroll had already been on several journeys. In 1942 it was transported by the Nazis from its home in the Czech town of Kolin to Prague for their museum to a race they sought to annihilate. The same year they transported the Kolin Jewish community of 480 to Theresienstadt and other concentration camps: only 28 survived. In 1964 Torah scroll NO. 1462 journeyed from communist Prague to the Westminster Synagogue in London, together with hundreds of other scrolls. Two years later it was given to the newly formed Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue and for the last twenty years members of this Synagogue have been researching the history of the Jews of Kolin. This research led eighty members of the congregation to carefully pack up their Kolin Torah and take it back to its original synagogue for an emotional return visit to its homeland and town.
Over a weekend in October, the pilgrimage took in four Czech synagogues and a theatre. The first synagogue we didn't actually get into. The Jubilee Synagogue [one of only two open for regular worship in Prague] had been promised us for a Friday night choral service. Arriving, we found it locked and no caretaker or key in sight. And so, at 9.00pm over a hundred people sang their way through the Shabbat service on the steps of the synagogue and the pavements of Jerusalem Street, Prague. Thankfully the night was not too cold, the traffic quiet and by the street lights the choir could read their music. A few were anxidous for our security, but a couple of Holocaust survivors gave thanks; never did they think the time would come when such a large Jewish congregation could freely worship at night in public in Prague.
The second synagogue was the second largest in Europe, but again we were thwarted. The Great Synagogue in Plzen is being totally renovated and though we were let in to see the massive building operation, we could not hold our Shabbat morning service there. We sang a few psalms and made our way across the road where, behind the community offices, is found the first Plzen synagogue, built in 1875, but closed in 1892 when the big synagogue was opened. It has rotted away ever since. The present mall community have a tiny prayer room but for once there were too many Jews in town. So we took the chairs from the prayer room into the ruin of the old synagogue, and the Torah - and held perhaps the first service there for well over a hundred years. It was freezing cold, with no glass in the windows and no heating, but such was our enthusiasm we only felt cold when we stopped singing and praying, It was a Shabbat Bereishit to be remembered.
Sunday and the fourth synagogue: the real object of the pilgrimage. We were there to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its building, empty now, perhaps only two Jews left in town.
The Town Council have restored the exterior of the historic synagogue, but inside only the Ark, donated for its opening in 1696 by the leading European financier of the time, Samuel Oppenheimer, only the Ark has been renovated. It has been empty now since the Nazis removed its scrolls: and so the first emotional high point came as we paraded in our Kolin Torah scroll and placed it in the Ark. The place was packed: our congregation, our choir, visiting Jews from Israel and all over the Czech Republic, the Israeli consul and hundreds of Kolin people: the mayor, priests, townspeople, anxious to hear again the sound of Jewish worship.
We held a weekday morning service, the choir leading the singing as we filled the ancient sanctuary with Jewish prayer and song. Tears again as we read out the names of just a few of the hundreds of the community murdered by the Nazis. And then tears of a different nature as a young Israeli girl, grand-daughter of one of the survivors, over specially for the commemoration chanted from the Kolin Torah. The service ended with a teenager from Northwood sounding the shofar, a sound of hope and triumph.
And so the theatre. That night in the civic theatre our choir gave a concert of Jewish music and the drama group performed "The Stones of Kolin", the musical play that tells the history of the Jews of Kolin. In the afternoon the cast had visited the cemetery and touched the graves of the people they were playing. In the audience were four of the twenty-eight survivors - again characters in the play. It was an emotional, magical performance that brought to life the story of the Jews of Kolin.
Now the Synagogue is empty again, the Torah journeying back to Northwood, but the pilgrims will always remember that weekend in four synagogues and a theatre [and other places like Theresienstadt] - and will fight on to see the synagogue is preserved and the memory of the Jews of Kolin never forgotten.
The Nazis may have murdered the Kolin community but the British congregation is thriving and at that service reaffirmed its pledge to read regularly the Kolin Torah and to keep alive the memory of its original owners.