KLADNO – The Scrolls, the Church, the Mystery

By Michael Heppner

Why has Northwood got three Czech Scrolls? Two of them – from Trebon and from Kolin - came because we needed them for our services when we were a young congregation. The Scroll from Kladno came because we offered to care for a seriously damaged Scroll – or half a Scroll – from the last part of Numbers to the end of Deuteronomy - the one in the glass case.

We have done quite a lot to fulfil our responsibility to our memorial Scrolls over the past 30 years – yes it is 30 years since Andrew's landmark sermon on Yom Kippur 1978. We have held a Scroll Shabbat every year and we have set an example to congregations across the world. We have collected information. We have held seminars and workshops. We have visited the Kolin and Trebon places and tried to make an impact. Congregations in this country, in many parts of the USA and beyond have copied us and shown us what more can be done to build the lost congregation of their Scroll into the life of their living congregation.


How was I to know that in October of that year an enquiry would come to the Memorial Scrolls Trust from an American congregation that wanted to know something about the history of their Scroll 458 which had come from Kladno? I was able to get her off to a flying start by sending her my notes from January 1981, and the talk I gave here on 10 June 1988 – 20 years ago in four days time. She was not starting from scratch. She knew that the synagogue was a church. She now knew about Rudolf Salus, the survivor whom I had met and who had told me about the hidden Scrolls of Kladno. She knew that Jews had lived there since 1685