The Warsaw Ghetto. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Three Books of Esther scrolls read on Purim during the Holocaust were recently found in a hidden synagogue at the Warsaw Ghetto after a wall in an old building in the ghetto collapsed.

Researchers at the Shem Olam Institute, also known as the Faith & Holocaust Institute for Education Documentation and Research in Kfar Haroeh, made the discovery of the scrolls.

The scrolls were transferred to a storage archive at the institute. Two of the scrolls were in good condition but the third was burnt and nearly disintegrated.

Rabbi Avraham Krieger, head of Shem Olam, said: “The more we investigate the life of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, we discover the courage and mental strength the Jews exhibited to keep the faith alive despite the grief and the threat of death that surrounded them from all directions. These scrolls, which relate the Jews’ miraculous rescue from those who sought their destruction, survived the Nazi hell.”