November 26th marks the annual commemorative event organised by the  Westminster Synagogue Scrolls Committee to remember the lives of those from the towns of Hořovice, Horažd’ovice and Přeštice whose fate ended with starvation and death. We are proud that we read from these scrolls on the occasions of Bar/Bat Mitzvah and festival services, thus making this service a celebration of life, looking into the future with optimism whilst remembering the past.

We most cordially invite you to attend our significant event of remembrance, this year planned to be held in person, as well as streamed online. We are honoured that Elli Stern will give a talk on her recent novel “The Red Sound”. The main focus of the novel, which alternates witty description of the contemporary music world with dramatic flashbacks to the Nazi death camps, is the transmission of memories through generations; the challenges of understanding and interpreting the spirit of art; and how a lover of music and culture can still commit terrible atrocities.  Although this is a work of fiction, the historical depiction of the stories of the thousands of musicians, who died in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, are the result of extensive documented research. 

After the talk, we will hold a short concert with Edna Stern who will lead us through pieces from Karel Reiner, Leos Janacek, and Gideon Klein. Edna is a concert pianist and piano professor at the Royal College of Music who is always in search of combining various genres and disciplines and has collaborated in past years with theatre/film director Amos Gitaï as well as Etoile/Leading Principal Dancer from the Paris National Opera Ballet, Agnès Letestu. In recent years, Stern’s very meaningful program has featured Sonatas written by Jewish composers from the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and she has been the first to perform and record Karel Reiner’s 2nd Piano Sonata ‘Victory’.

We will then begin our memorial service, remembering the names of each family that was lost from our Scroll Towns and will also be hearing from our Vice-Chair, Lukas Mach, on his visit to Přeštice for the laying of new Stolpersteine. We then invite you to join us afterwards for refreshments as we raise a glass in their memories. 

Ahead of the event, at 2:00pm we will be offering a 60-minute tour of the Memorial Scrolls Trust Museum, located on the third floor of our building. The MST is the charity which has loaned our Torah Scrolls and who care for the 1,564 Czech Scrolls which were rescued in 1964. Please note that the tour will only be occurring in person.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to be in touch.