As part of their goal to eradicate all aspects of Jewish culture, the Nazi regime destroyed thousands of Jewish ceremonial objects, including Torah scrolls. Torah scrolls are highly revered, so there are strict guidelines in place for how to handle scrolls that have been damaged and desecrated. According to Jewish tradition, a scroll such as this that can no longer be used should be buried in a ceremony similar to a funeral.

However, the Marquer Scroll followed a different, educational path instead.

In 2004 or 2005, Danny Marquer was going through his mother’s effects, and discovered an object unlike anything else among her things. It was a thick piece of parchment with Hebrew writing on it. More than that – it had been defiled; written on in German and marked with a postage stamp with Hitler’s face on it. This fragment of Torah had been used as postage wrapping, and sent to Danny Marquer’s mother during the Second World War.

After its discovery, Danny Marquer eventually got connected with Danny Spungen, a Trustee of the Spungen Family Foundation, thus starting the Scroll’s journey towards being used for educational purposes, to help teach about the Holocaust.

You can read the full story of the Marquer Scroll in the article below, entitled, Day of Atonement: The Unfolding Story of the Marquer Scroll, written by Professor Kevin Ostoyich.

The Spungen Family Foundation has another desecrated Torah (also used as a parcel wrapper) in its primary postal collection, which you can learn more about HERE.

 

Left: Danny Marquer next to the Marquer Scroll at CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, where it is currently on loan. March 5, 2016.

 

[Note: Our website is a work in progress. More photos will be added to this page. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the Marquer Scroll or the following article, please send an email to Mikayla Hoppe at: mikayla@spungenfoundation.org]