(JEWISH GROUP) The Holocaust Torah that survived a Mississippi synagogue fire was brought by the state's only survivor [View all]

[Behind the Aegis]

The Holocaust Torah that survived a Mississippi synagogue fire was brought there by the state’s only survivor


Auschwitz survivor Gilbert Metz stands in front of the ark at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi. Behind him is a Torah he helped rescue from the Holocaust. It has been on permanent display at the front of the building since 1992. Courtesy of Joseph Metz (left); Alanna Cooper (right)

When firefighters cleared Beth Israel Synagogue after an arson attack this month, the library floor was slick with water and ash. Prayer books lay swollen and blackened. Smoke clung to the sanctuary walls.

Two Torah scrolls burned. A third Torah did not.

That Torah, displayed for decades in a glass case near the front of the synagogue, survived unscathed. Its presence at Beth Israel was not incidental. It was brought to Mississippi by Gilbert Metz, the state’s only concentration camp survivor — a man who retrieved it from Europe and brought it to the American South. It, too, had survived the Nazis.

“The million dollar question is: How in the hell did he get to Mississippi?” his grandson, Joseph Metz, recalled in an interview on Tuesday.

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