By Daily Press staff
Congregation Mishkon Tephilo will rededicate a Torah scroll, saved from destruction in Hungary during World War II, as part of its Shabbat morning worship on Nov. 29.
While many Jewish congregations in metropolitan Los Angeles, including Mishkon Tephilo, display Torah scrolls preserved from the Holocaust, this Torah scroll has a unique connection to Santa Monica resident and Mishkon member Louis Sneh. He was raised in a village called Mezokovachaza in southern Hungary, where it was the Torah scroll of the Jewish community of 420.
In 1944, the German army occupied Hungary and deported the Jews of the village. Most were sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, from which only nine returned. The synagogue — used by the local Nazi authorities as a storehouse for all the worldly possessions of the deported Jews — remained standing, with the Torah scroll still intact. In the 1970s, the Communist regime in Hungary destroyed the synagogue. The Torah, spared from destruction once more, fell into other hands.
In the 1990s, Sneh, one of the survivors of the deportation, learned the whereabouts of the Torah scroll and began years of negotiations to reclaim it. In June 2002, Sneh, his wife Dina, and their son and grandsons traveled to Europe and brought the Torah to the United States for restoration and safekeeping.
The mantle covering the Torah is the original one that adorned it in Hungary. It now has the added words, in Hebrew and English, “In memory of the Congregation of Mezokovachaza, Hungary. Destroyed in the Holocaust. This Torah scroll was rescued in the year 2002.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 24, 2003. Read the original PDF.