Berlin receives ritual textiles taken to the US after the war — Jerusalem Post

On October 22, 2026, the Jewish community of Berlin, Germany, received two ancient ritual textiles: a parochet, a curtain for the Torah ark, and a band for tying a Torah scroll. The items, which ended up in the United States after the war, were returned during a ceremony at the New Synagogue Berlin — Centrum Judaicum museum and archive on Oranienburger Straße, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Bonnie Koppell handed over the items on behalf of the Temple Chai community in Phoenix, United States. Gideon Joffe, president of the Berlin community, accepted them on its behalf. Rabbi Gesa Ederberg, historian and Rabbi Andreas Nachama, community members and 29 visitors from Arizona also attended the ceremony.

The items’ journey to the United States

According to the publication, after the war the items were acquired by Moishe Sachsenhaus, a Belarus-born Holocaust survivor. The seller claimed that he had taken the textiles from a burning Berlin synagogue on November 9, 1938, during the November Pogrom, known as Kristallnacht. According to Moishe Sachsenhaus’s son, Saul, the man demanded food, coffee, cigarettes and cigars in exchange and threatened to destroy the items.

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Moishe and Rosa Sachsenhaus later emigrated to the United States and brought the textiles with them. After Moishe Sachsenhaus died in 1993, the family donated them to Temple Chai. The items were displayed there until 2026, when the synagogue building was deconsecrated and the community moved to Scottsdale.

Display in Berlin

The parochet contains an embroidered Kiddush text, a blessing over wine for Shabbat and holidays. It also bears a Hebrew inscription that may be the signature of the craftsman Yitzhak Itzik ben Yehuda Leib from Rîbnița, a city in Moldova. The decorated band retains a blessing for a child named Yitzhak Itzik; it was likely embroidered for a ritual circumcision.

Experts from Berlin’s Jewish community were unable to confirm which specific prewar synagogue the curtain came from. It will be added to the Centrum Judaicum collection, while the band is planned to be displayed at the community center on the site of the former synagogue on Fasanenstraße. During the ceremony, Koppell said that this time the items were “returning home.”