Fifty-two more sifrei Torah and megilos will
soon be handed over to the Jewish people by Lithuania,
following the transfer of 309 previously undiscovered
sifrei Torah scrolls that took place in January,
according to Rabbi Abba Dunner, secretary- general of the
Conference of European Rabbis.
The collection of scrolls, around 70-90 years old, was part
of Nazi loot confiscated from the Jewish community of
Lithuania during the Holocaust, which lay in the chapel of
St. George Church in Vilnius for over 50 years.
"I knew they kept the best for themselves, because the
quality of the ones they handed over was horrible," said
Rabbi Dunner. "I discovered that there were 58 more
scrolls."
Negotiations over the remaining scrolls were begun soon after
the January ceremony, which included the president, foreign
minister, and chairman of the Lithuania parliament, who gave
the sifrei Torah to a Jewish-Israeli delegation that
accepted the scrolls on behalf of the State of Israel and the
Jewish people.
"They kept stalling, telling me that the Torah scrolls were
part of `Lithuanian Jewish culture.' I told them that the
scrolls weren't part of the culture, the Jews were. There
were 212,000 Lithuanian Jews who were killed, and their
relatives are now coming back to claim their belongings. I
told them we weren't moving until the government showed me
the rest."
Rabbi Dunner said he found in the library vaults "the most
beautiful sifrei Torah and megilos. They didn't
compare to any of the 309 we took out in January."
Rabbi Dunner said the head of the library was reluctant to
release them, but after three months of negotiations, "we
decided to bring pressure from the American Jewish Committee,
B'nai Brith International, and the Conference of European
Rabbis," three of the groups that made up an adhoc committee
formed last July among various representatives of world
Jewry, including the Israeli government, Menorah, and Heichal
Shlomo.
"Within two months [of the renewed pressure], the 52
sifrei Torah came out," said Dunner. "We left six
behind for the Jews of Lithuania. And when this is all over,
we're going into the library to check their stacks. There
have got to be hundreds of thousands of seforim
[religious books] in a country that was recognized before the
Shoah as the bedrock of Jewish learning. These books
have to come back to their rightful home."
