V-E day services were held today in one of the few remaining synagogues in Europe, in the town of Horasdovice, by Capt. Emanuel Schenk of New York. Rabbi Schenk, who holds a Bronze Stat for gallantry, found in the rear of an obscure courtyard an undzmaged, attractive synagogue which once served the fifty Jewish families who lived here.
Of these fifty families, one survivor remains, Jacob Levy, a former butcher who has three children living in Chicago. Levy once owned a prosperous business, but he lost it in 1939. He was not deported during the German occupation because he was married to a non-Jew, and, because of his age, was unmolested when even the Jews married to non-Jews were deported recently, although his son was sent to a concentration camp.
Friendly Czechs volunteered to clean up the synagogue, which had been used as a veterinary storehouse by the Germans, and then watched quietly as Chaplain Schenk rededicated the edifice in the presence of a congregation consisting of American Jewish soldiers grouped around Horasdevice’s last Jew.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
