A Torah scroll from Kielce in Poland survived the Holocaust and its owner fell victim to an anti-Jewish Polish pogrom. Now, it will be entrusted to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, with the aim of memorializing the family and the Jewish community.
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Mordechai (Motel) Kanner was born in 1910 in Kielce in Poland to Sender (Alexander) and Sara-Rachel, nee Redlich. Mordechai had three sisters: Esther, Hela-Handel and Luba. Mordechai was a watchmaker and traded in Zieger watches.
With the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Poland, Kanner fled to the Soviet Union. Along the way, he passed through a village where an elderly Jewish woman gave him a Torah scroll. Kenner carried on his journey with the scroll, but its size weighed him down in his escape, so he decided to bury it in the ground and come back to retrieve it if he ever managed to survive the war.
Kanner joined the partisans and finally arrived in the city of Lviv, currently in Ukraine, where he met Rebecca, a young widow with two small children. Mordechai and Rebecca fell in love and married in 1945. After the liberation, he decided to return to Kielce, his hometown. Rebecca and the rest of the family waited for him in Krakow, and after a delay in his return, Rebecca went to look for him in Kielce.
During her search, Rebecca discovered that Mordechai was severely beaten by the Poles in a pogrom that took place there in July 1946. During the pogrom, dozens of Jews were brutally murdered and many were injured. Kanner was thrown into a ditch together with the bodies of those murdered in the pogrom. Rebecca found him alive among the bodies and managed to get him to a hospital.
After he was discharged, the two moved to a displaced persons camp in Germany. Kanner was able to fulfill the request of the elderly woman in the Polish village. He found the Torah scroll where he buried it and protected it. In 1949, the family immigrated to Israel and settled in Holon.
In 1950, the Torah scroll was donated to the Great Synagogue in Holon and was dedicated in memory of Kanner's parents who perished in the Holocaust. Mordechai's daughter, Sarah Megidish, and his grandson Avi Kanner have recently decided to donate the scroll to the collection at Yad Vashem, as a memorial and testimony. "This is a unique object," Sarah said, "It symbolizes not only the difficult events but also the determination and desire to preserve Jewish identity. By granting this Torah scroll to Yad Vashem, it will become part of the memory of the Holocaust for future generations."
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