There was an article about Auschwitz in the New York Times Metro section about a Torah being saved

. found. If you think of the rarest of violins in the world l ost and found and than couple it with a lost manuscript of Beethoven, perhaps yo u get an idea of the spiritual and moral value of this find. The Torah journey s tarted with the take-over of Auschwitz by the Germans. A sexton buried the Torah and when the Jews were incarcerated the scrolls containing The Ten Commandments and the book of Deuteronomy was smuggled in to the camp. The rest of the Torah was still buried in a graveyard where the Nazis were least likely to look for it . A foundation that has found and restored Torahs that were lost helped to restore the Torah.. It is quite a exacting process.. Any mistakes can be costly because a Torah is a holy scroll that must contain no marred work or uncompleted words and must be transcribed by trained artists. At the Save the Torah foundation a R abbi, Menachem Youlus, heard the stories from some of the survivors of the camp about the Torah. He searched for the Torah in a near by cemetery only to be disa ppointed. His thirteen- year- old son suggested that perhaps the grounds of the cemetery had shrunk during the intervening years. He returned to Germany and found the Torah but it was missing the two panels men tioned before of the Ten Commandments and Deuteronomy. He then advertised in a P olish newspaper for the two missing panels and a priest answered the Ad and was paid a handsome price for the missing parts. I imagined how it was for these followers of Jewish faith they must have known t hey were going to die, yet they kept their faith alive by singing the passages a nd following the Ten Commandments to their last breaths. These martyrs followed the sacred letters of the law of their God: touching the Torah with their hands, blessing the scroll, and keeping their faith that the Torah would be found and not destroyed by the evil forces among them. The Torah has found a home at the Central Synagogue, in New York City. It has tr aveled hard and had to be cleaned of dirt and restored painfully one letter afte r another. It is a testament to the survival of the Jews and the determination o f the chosen people of the book, to continue their journey, to teach and create a better world for all people. I for one, want so badly to touch the lives of th ose that departed that kept the faith and for a brief moment in time transcended their despicable conditions to bring their li ves together in prayer. May the Torah remain an inspiration to all that read it and may it become the living word for all nations to abide by the Ten commandmen ts. I hope to visit the Central Synagogue on this week of remembrance oh the Hol ocaust. At the same time I will remember what happened in Serbia, the Congo, and the ot her African countries presently and the past that have suffered. The present sit uation in Tibet saddens me that we still have not learned to live together and p rotect human rights in this country. I, however have hope of the majesty of huma n behavior and in the ancient laws written in the Torah and other sacred books o f all faiths.