Dutch Torah scroll is returned intact
News of the find came after one of the family members told local historian she had found a scroll of unknown origins in her home
A Torah scroll that went missing from a Dutch synagogue after the Nazi invasion 80 years ago has been returned intact to the Jewish community.
The scroll belonged to a synagogue in the southern city of Dordrecht, according to Chris den Hoedt of the Jewish Community of Rotterdam, and had been kept safe by the Pennings family, whose members forgot
about it.
News of the find came after one of the family members told local historian Kees Weltevrede she had found a Torah scroll of unknown origins in her home. “[The scroll] was simply presumed lost, like so many other religious artifacts lost in the Holocaust,” said Weltevrede, who thinks the scroll and several others were kept by Meijer Michiel Cohen, a Jewish metal factory owner who survived the Holocaust.
Fellow merchant Aart Bezemer bought the factory and gave the scroll
to respected teacher Kees Pennings, who died in 2001.
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