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Jewish Leaders Thank Lithuania for Returning Torahs VOA News 28 Jan 2002 20:42 UTC 
Representatives of several Jewish groups have praised Lithuania's decision to turn over more than 300 religious manuscripts known as torahs to Hechal Schlomo, a Jerusalem Center for Jewish Heritage.
Representatives of the American Jewish Committee along with the vice president of the B'nai B'rith organization met with Lithuanian prime minister Algirdas Brazauskas on Monday to thank him for returning 309 torahs to the Jewish community.
An additional 58 scrolls will remain in Lithuania at the National Library.
The release of the torahs, containing the first five books of the Old Testament, comes as the world marks the 58th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. The Nazis exterminated more than a million people, mostly Jews there. The scrolls were placed in Lithuania's archives after the Nazis destroyed many of Lithuania's synagogues and killed 90 percent of the country's 220,000 Jews during World War II. After the country formally regained independence from Soviet rule in 1991, international Jewish groups began pressing the government to hand the Torahs over to Jewish religious organizations.
Some information for this report provided by AFP.
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