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PARCHMENT THAT SURVIVED HOLOCAUST PRESENTED TO BRUSSELS SYNAGOGUE A historic ceremony took place this week at which a handwritten parchment of the Song of Songs that survived the Holocaust in Lithuania - was presented to the Sepharadic Synagogue in Brussels. The scroll, estimated by experts to be between 150-170 years old, was among some 360 sacred Jewish scrolls and fragments rescued from destruction during the Holocaust that were transferred from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to Jerusalem in 2002 under an agreement signed between Heichal Shlomo, the Center of Jewish Heritage in Jerusalem, and the Lithuanian National Library and Museum. The agreement was reached following protracted negotiations between the Lithuanian government, the Israeli government and Jewish organizations, including B'nai B'rith International, that began when the scrolls were discovered six years ago. The agreement transferring the scrolls is the first of its kind with any government in Europe and will serve as a precedent for the return of sacred Jewish scrolls, books, and artifacts from other countries. The Song of Songs scroll was deeded to the synagogue by a public committee headed by former Deputy President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Judge Professor Menachem Elon, that has been charged with distributing the scrolls for use in congregations and yeshivas in Israel and around the world. Members of the committee include B'nai B'rith Executive Vice President Daniel Mariaschin and B'nai B'rith World Center-Jerusalem Director Alan Schneider. "As many Jewish communities throughout Europe, including Belgium, face a new, pernicious wave of anti-Semitism, few acts can be more reassuring than the reintroduction into the synagogue of a sacred scroll rescued from the Holocaust," noted Mariaschin. The collection of sacred scrolls was saved by the director of the Lithuanian Library and Museum, Antanas Ulpis (1894-1980) who began in 1949, as director of the book archive of the Latvian Soviet Republic, to assemble a large collection of historically important printed materials. This enterprise allowed him also to collect materials from synagogues and Jewish schools closed by order of the Communist authorities. Among these materials were a large number of scrolls and fragments held for safekeeping - apparently at the request of Jews - in a church. Ulpis received permission to use the basement of St. George Church in Vilnius as a warehouse and, in breach of Stalinist law that mandated their destruction, hid the scrolls under copies of official Communist Party gazettes. This was done at great personal risk to himself and the archive staff. Following Lithuanian independence in 1992, the archive was reorganized and the scrolls were transferred to the National Library from where they were returned for Jewish worship 60 years after the near total destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. Six scrolls were left behind for use by the small remaining Jewish community of Lithuania - some 2,000 -- down from a pre-war population of over 200,000.
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