Note: this article originally appeared in Listen in October 2018.
Many of you will know that one of our scrolls is a ‘Czech Scroll’, which originated from the village of Pacov in the Czech Republic. For those of you who don’t know, during WWII 1,564 Torah scrolls were taken by the Nazis from synagogues all over Bohemia and Moravia.
They survived the war and were stored in an old dilapidated shul in Prague until, in 1964, they were purchased and brought over to London’s Westminster Synagogue and the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust was set up. The Trust repaired the scrolls and loans them out to synagogues around the world, and we have scroll number 970, which came from the village of Pacov.
Until recently I didn’t know anything about the Jewish community in Pacov. However, due to some amazing serendipity, I’ve learned more. Nottingham Liberal Synagogue has two Czech scrolls and has developed good links with the villages from which they came. One of these villages is close to Pacov. While researching the history of their scroll, they realized that we had a Pacov scroll and, furthermore, that the daughter of one their members, Student Rabbi Anna Posner, was going to be coming to lead our Yom Kippur services. When Anna’s mother came to our Yom Kippur service she brought with her a letter explaining the link. The village of Pacov lies in the Bohemian- Moravian Highlands area of the Czech Republic and currently it has about 5,000 inhabitants. There are no resident Jews in Pacov today, however there used to be a thriving community. The origins of the Jewish community in Pacov can be traced back to the late 16th century.
The first prayer room was probably situated in a private home. A freestanding Classical synagogue was erected around 1823 and later rebuilt in the Neo-Romanesque style. The number of Jews in Pacov peaked around 1880 at over 200 persons.
Afterwards it slowly declined as many left for foreign countries or bigger cities, mainly Prague. In November 1942 the 97 Jews who then lived in Pacov were transported to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz concentration camps where all but six of them eventually perished. No seniors or children survived – including the youngest Holocaust victim Helenka Schecková, who was 2 years old at the time. The last Pacov rabbi Nathan Guttmann died in Auschwitz too. His daughter Nelly survived the Holocaust and now lives in Israel.
Since 2015 there has been a grass-roots effort by citizens of Pacov to restore the synagogue and to create a museum in memory of the former Jewish community. They call their project ‘Tikkun Pacov’. Their website makes very interesting reading and is well worth a visit: http://tikkun.cz/?page_id=44&lang=en
by Priscilla Dorrance