CLOSE-UP I

veryibraliiks A Stor

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

Assistant Editor

ollowing his friend's
directions to the
site of a secret trea-
sure, the American
tourist wandered for
days about the streets of
Czestochowa, Poland.
Finally, Harry Rapaport
came to a factory deep in the
heart of the city, his father's
hometown. He walked
upstairs and opened the
door. There, in the attic, he
saw a remarkable vision:
piles and piles of torn. Torah
scrolls, their parchments
faded and battered.
The Sifrei Torah sat in the
attic since World War II,
when Czestochowa was
home to some 30,000 Jews.
No one knows how the
Torahs found their way to
the building, which once
served as the community's
mikvah.
A visitor to the city heard
about the Torahs from one of
the town's last Jewish
residents. Then he passed
the information along to his
friend Harry Rapaport of
Melville, N.Y. When Mr.
Rapaport learned of them,
he resolved to take the Sifrei
Torah home.
Standing in the dusty
attic, Mr. Rapaport slipped
some of the parchments into
a duffel bag. When he
returned home, the repair
work began. Shreds of what
once comprised 31 Sifrei
Torah were pieced together
to create seven Torahs.
One of the rescued Torahs
from Czestochowa now
belongs to the Holocaust
Memorial Center in West
Bloomfield. It is one of many
local Torahs with curious
histories. They have been
discovered in trash cans,
rescued by German officials
and recovered from small
Jewish communities
destroyed in the Holocaust.
Their histories are often
painful, but the scrolls will
be the focus of a joyous
celebration this week —

.k:;-%28 FRIDAY , OCrOBER 12;-, 1
.4