Scroll that survived Holocaust reaches Israel for first time

In what is being called a “thrilling discovery,” an Israeli Holocaust institute received this week a rare relic that survived World War II in western Poland.

A nearly complete scroll of the Book of Ecclesiastes reached Israel for the first time, and is now being studied by researchers at the Shem Olam Faith & the Holocaust Institute for Education & Research in Kfar Haroeh, in the center of the country.

Experts believe that the scroll was written at the beginning of the 20th century, and that the conditions in which it was stored allowed it to survive in such a complete state.

The scroll is made of parchment, which suggests to Shem Olam researchers that it belonged to a Lithuanian Jewish community that moved to western Poland for economic reasons. Polish Jews would read the Five Scrolls, of which Ecclesiastes is one, out of prayer books, while Lithuanians would read out of parchment scrolls.

“This is a thrilling discovery that reveals an authentic historical relic from one of the bleakest periods in Jewish history,” said Rabbi Avraham Krieger, the head of Shem Olam. “There is in it a kind of silent witness to the supreme efforts of the communities living in Poland to maintain the Jewish lifestyle — despite the winds of death that blew from all sides at the time. The thought that this scroll was held by Jews who might well have perished during the Holocaust is a difficult thought, but it is exciting to know that despite all the hardships it surely went through, it returned to the Jewish people.”

The Book of Ecclesiastes is read by Jewish communities on the holiday of Sukkot, which ended last week.