In an extraordinary and emotional moment, 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Kurt Marx was called to the Torah at a shul in north London and read from the very same Sefer Torah he used at his bar mitzvah in Cologne, Germany, nearly 88 years ago—just two months before Kristallnacht.

“It was beyond anything I ever imagined possible,” Marx said through tears. “When I read the same pesukim I read as a child, before my life was turned upside down, it felt as though all the years in between disappeared for a moment.”

Marx celebrated his bar mitzvah in September 1938 at the Adass Jeschurun Orthodox synagogue in Cologne. Just two months later, during Kristallnacht, he watched as the shul was set ablaze. Amid the flames, someone managed to rescue the sifrei Torah and bring them to the nearby Jewish school where Marx was a student.

Following the pogrom, school principal Erich Klibansky worked to organize the rescue of his students through the Kindertransport. In January 1939, Marx said goodbye to his parents, believing they would soon join him in England once their immigration papers were approved. The children traveled to Britain carrying one of the rescued sifrei Torah with them.

Marx rebuilt his life in Britain, later marrying Ingrid, an Auschwitz survivor. The couple eventually settled in London after spending several years in Tanzania, where Marx worked in the diamond industry.

For decades, Marx searched for information about his parents. The last letter he received from them arrived in the fall of 1942. He later learned they had been deported to Minsk and murdered in the Maly Trostenets extermination site in present-day Belarus. Marx was the sole survivor from his mother’s family.

The remarkable reunion with the Sefer Torah began when Marx discovered an old document recording its arrival at a London synagogue in 1939. Working with the Association of Jewish Refugees and the United Synagogue, researchers eventually traced the historic Sefer Torah to Brondesbury Park Synagogue in London.

Standing once again before the Sefer Torah from which he had read as a 13-year-old, Marx described the moment as far more than rediscovering a treasured object.

“It was restoring a living connection to my family, my community, and the world the Holocaust tried to destroy,” he said.

Now 100 years old, Marx continues to speak out against rising antisemitism, saying education and remembrance remain the strongest tools to combat hatred and ensure future generations never forget.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)