Eastern Europe:
Hunt For Lost
Treasure

STEVE LIPMAN
Special to The Jewish News

A

s president of the Memorial
Foundation for Jewish
Culture, Rabbi Alexander
Schindler says he often hears
*disturbing stories from people who
have returned from visits to Jewish
communities in Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union.
"Barely a month goes by" that they
don't bring reports about a treasure
trove of unclaimed Jewish artifacts "in
somebody's attic or an old synagogue"
— sacred texts, Torah scrolls, monu-
ments, archival materials and hundreds
of other objects.
Nobody knows exactly what arti-
facts, formerly the property of Jewish
organizations or Jewish families, sur-
vived the Nazi and Communist eras,
Rabbi Schindler says.
Now, the Memorial Foundation
wants to find out.
Less than a decade after the fall of
ommunism in the region, the
Memorial Foundation has hunched a
"comprehensive inventory of Jewish
cultural assets" in some dozen coun-
tries, including Lithuania, where the
group is involved in trying to save a
treasure trove of books and Torahs in
Vilna that survived the Holocaust.
"The people were killed" during the
Holocaust in these lands, the rabbi
ays. "Shouldn't.we at least preserve the
rich harvest of their minds and spirits?
Jewish communities in the former
Iron Curtain countries lack the finan-
cial and technical resources to conduct
such a study, and Jewish organizations
in the West lacked access until recent
years, he says.
"We were just guessing that some-
thing is there," says Rabbi Schindler,
_ resident emeritus of the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations.
"Time is running out. These things ...
will disappear soon."
The inventory, to be funded by seed
-money from the World Jewish
Restitution Organization and the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims
Against Germany, will complement the
survey conducted by the Claims
-Conference in several countries. ❑

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