Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Nazi Drum Made From Torah Scroll Is Preserved

A Holocaust commemoration group brought from Poland to Israel a drum that was made out of a Torah scroll and belonged to a Nazi sympathizer.

The drum was found last month by volunteers of the From The Depths organization in the basement of a man who lived in a village near the central Polish city of Lodz, and whose estate was put on sale.

The volunteers came to the sale after hearing that the objects belonging to the man, a former member of the Nazi Hitler Youth movement, contained several that were connected to Jews.

Jonny Daniels, the Israeli founder of From The Depths, bought the drum and, after consulting with the Israeli chief rabbinate on how it should be treated in view of religious laws on handling Holy Scripture, decided to incorporate it into a traveling exhibition the group is preparing this year.

Daniels said the segment of parchment that was used to make the drum is “incredibly well preserved.” It likely came from one of the many synagogues that serviced the area’s Jewish communities, which before the Holocaust had tens of thousands of members.

“During the war all the synagogues were destroyed and no one knew what happened to the Torah scrolls,” Daniels said. “After 70 years, the generations of survivors are leaving us too fast, now we become responsible to carry on this memory.”

The action was carried out in memory of the family of Joe Levkovitch — a Poland-born, 88-year-old Jew whose parents, among other relatives, were murdered in the Belzec death camp and who last July immigrated from Canada to Israel.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.