The German Cut a Piece from the Torah, and After 60 Years a Chilling Detail Was Revealed

Rabbi Yitzhak Dovid Grossman, Chief Rabbi of Migdal HaEmek, tells a chilling story about a Nazi commander who left his son his army belt. The document was wrapped in a parchment from... a Torah scroll.

It turns out that during the dark years that befell the Jewish people, the Nazi commander tore a part from the sacred Torah scroll to use its parchment to wrap his army belt.

Rabbi Grossman recounts receiving a phone call from the head of the Lower Galilee Council, Moti Dotan, who told him that he had gone on a delegation with city leaders to Germany. During the visit, a member of the German parliament approached him and asked to speak privately.

The German parliament member told the council head that he had received his father's army certification wrapped in "Jewish parchment." He handed it to Dotan to bring to Israel. The council head decided to give it to Rabbi Grossman to keep among his treasures.

Rabbi Grossman opened the sacred parchment and was shocked: The part of the Torah that the Nazi commander, who did not know the Holy Tongue, had cut was from Deuteronomy, in the section of admonitions and curses that would befall the people of Israel if they did not heed Hashem's voice. "I immediately opened the parchment to see where the Nazi commander who couldn't read the Holy Tongue had cut. To my amazement, it was precisely where the Torah speaks of the admonitions and curses in Deuteronomy, what would happen when we do not do Hashem’s will and do not listen to His commandments," recounts Rabbi Grossman.

The verses in the part the commander tore read: "In secret, in siege and in straitness, that your enemy shall distress you in your gates. If you will not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, to fear this glorious and fearful name, Hashem, your God. And Hashem will make your plagues distinctive and the plagues of your seed, great plagues and of long continuance, and sore illnesses and of long continuance. And He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt, which you feared, and they shall cleave unto you. Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in this book of the law, them Hashem will bring upon you, until you are destroyed. And you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because you would not obey the voice of Hashem your God."