About 1,400 Torahs that survived the Holocaust in Moravia and Bohemia, were first shipped to the Jewish Museum in Prague and are now part of the Memorial Scrolls Trust, the London organization that administers the collection. The scrolls are never sold or gifted, but are allocated on permanent loan to synagogues that request one, The New York Times reported.

Many of the scrolls had been burned, waterlogged, torn or scarred when synagogues were destroyed during WWII. In 1963, Eric Estorick, an art dealer who had a gallery in London, helped to arrange a sale of the Torahs to Ralph Yablon, a British philanthropist who bought the entire collection for $30,000 and established the trust. Over the next 20 years, the Torahs were repaired, and in 1964, the trust began sending them to synagogues in two dozen countries around the world. Institutions that seek a scroll are asked for a donation, now $5,000, for the trust, which operates with an all-volunteer staff.

One of the scrolls is on loan to Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, a Roman Catholic institution that cares for the terminally ill. The scroll is taken to the beds of patients of all religions, or none. The trust hopes that the scrolls are used to remind people of all faiths what we have in common rather than what divides us.