Julie Kohner was invited to present Voices of the Generations to Congregation Emanu-El on November 7, 2025, in Redlands, California. Rabbi Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel arranged for the presentation as part of the Congregation’s Kristallnacht memorial service. Julie presented This Is Your Life, Hanna Bloch Kohner, a new presentation on the placement of Stolpersteine in Amsterdam honoring her mother, and followed up with questions and answers, and a book signing.

As a part of this evening’s Kristallnacht memorial service, a dedication ceremony was held for the receipt of a Holocaust Memorial Torah scroll, saved from the destruction of the Nazis.

Everyone has a story and a history, and a Torah scroll is no exception. Thanks to the facilitation of Debra Duncan, CAPT, United States Navy [ret], and a former congregant in Norfolk, VA with Rabbi Cantor Bern-Vogel, and the board of Temple Adath Joseph of St. Joseph, Missouri, this precious Holocaust Memorial Scroll was received by Congregation Emanu El, which is taking over the care of the scroll formally allocated to Temple Adath Joseph in 1993.

The Holocaust Torah is Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST) #17, one of the 1564 Torah scrolls that survived the Shoah in Czechoslovakia. MST #17 is recorded to have been written in 1800. It was one of 25 scrolls taken from smaller communities outside of Prague, and placed in the Malvazinky Cemetery Chapel for safe keeping during the Second World War. They were later moved to the Jewish Museum in Prague. In 1958, all of the scrolls were moved by the communists to a warehouse near Prague. They were saved from further destruction and loss in 1964 and were donated to the Westminster Synagogue in London that year. The Memorial Scrolls Trust was later created as an independent charity to care for the Holocaust Torah Scrolls. Memorial Scrolls Trust has distributed some 1400 Holocaust Torah Scrolls to communities and organizations around the world.

.