Young and thriving, the twenty-year old city of Beitar Illit is hardly a historian’s treasure. But there’s more than meets the eye. On a sedate side street named after Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ztz”l stands a nondescript caravan housing a shul, and in its modestly adorned aron kodesh lies a fascinating — and moving — piece of history. This is Kehillas Ateres Zvi, and the unique Sefer Torah encased within its walls bears testimony to the extraordinary courage and selflessness of two Jewish women.
Vienna 1938.
The sun shone down on the impeccably clean city gassen radiating warmth and good cheer to hordes of blonde-haired pedestrians. On the balmy morning of November 10 even the weather refused to offer warning of the impending storm.
Mrs. Rosa Deutsch wife of the prominent Viennese internist and mohel Dr. Samuel Deutsch entered the spacious kitchen in her family’s flat to begin tackling supper.
BOOM!
Rosa frantically moved to the window and watched as six axe-wielding SS stormtroopers jumped from their black Mercedes-Benz into the neighborhood shul situated in the Deutsch’s courtyard. Within seconds every window of the synagogue was shattered.
“In my innocence I thought the brutes were finished with their work” she later recounted. “I soon realized they’d only just begun.”
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