WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2021) The US government impounded 17 Jewish funeral scrolls, manuscripts and community records that were stolen from Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust from an auction house that attempted to sell the artifacts, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
The artifacts were found through a auction house that offered them for sale, as well as a consigner and a purchaser. Three additional artifacts are believed to be in Israel and one in upstate New York, the Justice Department said in a press release.
"The Scrolls and Manuscripts that were illegally confiscated during the Holocaust contain priceless historical information that belongs to the descendants of families that lived and flourished in Jewish communities before the Holocaust," acting US Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said in the release.
Members of Jewish communities in Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Slovakia from whom the artifacts were taken had been gathered in ghettos, robbed of their property and deported to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust, where most were killed, the release said.
The scrolls and manuscripts contained prayers for the dead, memorial pages and/or the Names of deceased members of the Jewish communities, and in some cases, names of individuals who were deported by Nazis to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the release added.
