NEW YORK (Jul. 24)
Efforts to secure for newly built synagogues in Israel a substantial part of the Torah scrolls and other religious objects found in the Offenbach Depot in Germany are now being made by the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs.
The World Jewish Congress today announced that its representative took up this problem at recent meetings of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc., the agency set up jointly by a number of central Jewish organizations to conserve Jewish cultural and religious treasures. It was decided that after examination by experts, the bulk of the scrolls will be shipped to Israel for the benefit of the new synagogues, including 59 established in cooperation with the Jewish Agency during the last 18 months. The Ministry of Religious Affairs will act as a distributing office for the ceremonial objects in Israel.
The Congress also reported this weekend that the Nazi regime in Germany had accomplished its end–destruction of German Jewry. It cited figures which showed that in 1939 there were only 300,000 Jews left in Germany of some 525,000. By the end of the war, the report continued, only 4,000 Jews were alive in Germany. Most of these were persons who had married non-Jews, the report added.