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Ellin Yassky stands near a temporary memorial for the Beth El Congregation's torah, which was originally from the Czech Republic and was hidden during the Nazi regime.
FAIRFIELD — By her own count, Ellin Yassky had passed by it "thousands" of times.

But it wasn't until Sept. 11, 2005, that the memorial niche holding a torah across from the entrance to the sanctuary at Congregation Beth El spoke to her.

Not in words, of course, but for some reason, which even Yassky is at a loss to articulate, that day she stopped and thought, "That torah must have a story."

And the story Yassky, a Judaic art book editor, helped unearth has led congregants to the Czech Republic and back, learning the history behind the sacred scroll that was rescued from the oblivion of the Holocaust because it was hidden in the walls of a church.

"This," Yassky said of the torah, "is the center of our worship. A torah is central to our teachings."

And this particular torah, created in the 1800s, she said, speaks to the mission of all people to remember those whose lives ended because of the Holocaust.

"You must ask the questions, you must gather the information," Yassky said.

The torah, which came to Congregation Beth El in 1974, was initially kept at a small synagogue in Kladno, a city outside Prague.

Kladno, Yassky said, was a city where Jews and Christians lived together — with no "Jewish" neighborhood in particular.

When Czechoslovakia fell to the Nazi regime in 1939, the members of the synagogue made a fictitious sale of the building to the Hussite church.

The torah was supposed to be sent to Prague, but one member, Rudolf Salus,

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feared the order was coming from the Nazis and if sent, the torah would be lost forever.

Instead, he hid the torah in the building's wall, telling few people so as to spare them from any danger.

Salus and his family were sent to Terizen, but since his wife was not Jewish, it provided him with some protection, and he survived.

"At the end of the war, Rudolf comes back and unearths the torahs and ships them to Prague," Yassky said.

There, hundreds upon hundreds of torahs were stacked one on top of the other until 1964, when the Communist government realized it might be able to sell the torahs.

A deal was struck with a British philanthropist, who bought all 1,564 Czech torahs and created the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust.

The torahs were sent all over, and the torah, one of seven or eight from Kladno, ended up in Fairfield in 1974.

Yassky said it is very rare, a kabbalistic torah which believers in kaballah feel imbues it with mystical powers.

"It's not considered kosher," Yassky said. "It's old and some of the ink is flaking off. You can use it for study, but you can't use it in an observance."

Right now, it is in Florida undergoing restoration for a rededication ceremony next month.

But Yassky's curiosity led to more than just knowledge about the torah's history.

It turned into a visit to Kladno last December with 18 other synagogue members, where they participated in a ceremony in the Hussite church that was once a synagogue and said the kaddish at Sulas' graveside.

They met Petr Herrmann, an 83-year-old who had not been in the Kladno synagogue since he was 16, when he was taken to Terize and is the last surviving member of the Kladno Jewish community.

"We are very removed from the Holocaust," Yassky said, but in the Czech Republic, residents are still living with spectres of the past.

"Time is ticking, ticking, ticking, until there are no more survivors who can give us first-hand accounts," she said. "We are obligated to make those requests, to ask those questions that are uncomfortable, to delve into their history."

So the "serendipity," as Yassky calls it, that led to this exchange between Jews in Fairfield and Christians in Kladno, will be celebrated June 8 with the rededication of the Kladno torah on the Jewish holiday Shavuot, which marks when Moses received the Ten Commandments.

"It will be brought in like a bride, under a chupha, with great joy," she said.

On hand will be Helka Kaiserova, the Czech consul general in New York; Dan Jiranek, the mayor of Kladno; Irena Veverkova, Kladno's archivist; Eva Bodlakova, an elder in the Kladno Hussite Church, and Ela Weissberger, a Terezin survivor, as well as local elected officials.