Parchment prayer scroll with cover buried then recovered postwar
Extent and Medium
a: Height: 5.000 inches (12.7 cm) | Width: 1.000 inches (2.54 cm)
b: Height: 4.250 inches (10.795 cm) | Width: 1.250 inches (3.175 cm) | Depth: 0.875 inches (2.223 cm)
Archival History
The prayer scroll was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2014 by The George Washington University, which received the item as a bequest from the Estate of John P. Eden.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of The George Washington University and the Estate of John P. Eden
Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Scope and Content
Miniature prayer scroll with a cardboard case returned to Gisela Marx when she went back to Dulken, Germany, after the war. Gisela, 14, was sent to safety by her parents Edna and Leopold who placed her on a Kindertransport to England in August 1939. Erna and Leopold gave some of their religious items, including this scroll and a scroll of daily prayers (2013.476.10), and other valuables, such as jewelry, to a pastor in Dulken, to preserve them. He buried the materials in his cellar. The paster was later arrested and sent to a concentration camp for preaching anti-Nazi sermons. With the help of the Red Cross, the pastor located and wrote to Gisela in 1950. When she came to visit, he returned the items to Gisela, fulfilling her parents' request. He told Gisela that her parents had believed they were being deported to Theresienstadt. Gisela later discovered that they had been sent from Dusseldorf on December 11, 1941, to the Riga ghetto where they perished.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
a. Miniature, rolled, brown parchment prayer scroll with Hebrew calligraphy in black ink and a long line of German text explaining rules for observance. A varnished, pointed stick is inserted within each side roll. The a. measurement is for the sticks. The scroll is 3.375 inches in height. b. Loosely curved, open cardboard container covered with purple paper with a basket weave pattern and gold painted decorative bands. It holds the scroll (a.) and has no closure device.
Subjects
- Judaism--Liturgy--Texts.
- Scrolls, Jewish.
- Judaism--Prayers and devotions.
- Scrolls--Germany.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Dulken--Personal narratives.
Genre
- Jewish Art and Symbolism
- Object