In April, 2014, four congregants embarked on a special mission: they brought their “Little Torah from Svêtlá” to New York City to interview 94-year-old Herbert Morawetz, the last citizen of Svêtlá nad Sázavou to have prayed over that Torah on the evening of the Munich Agreement, October 1,1938.  It had been 76 years since he last saw the Torah and, without faltering, he held it in his arms and said the blessing again.

In April 2013, a group of OYRT-Beth Am congregants (“Beth Amnicks”) traveled to Central Europe for the first time and visited the town of Louny, the home of one of their three Czech Torahs. They met with the Mayor and other municipal officials and said Kaddish in the Prayer Hall of the old Jewish Cemetery.

In early June 2014, two “Beth Amnicks,” Barry and Carol Stein, met with the Mayor of Louny, the Municipal Archivist, and members of the Teplice Jewish community. Teplice is important because it has the largest Jewish Community outside of Prague, and today is a center of Jewish activity. The pair visited the synagogue, now used as storage facility for town records, a former Yeshiva, and the Jewish cemetery.  Almost 800 years ago, Jews played a prominent role in Louny. Today, there are no Jews.

On June 23, 2014, in the town of Louny, the Czech Republic, leaders of the Teplice Jewish Community and Louny officials placed a plaque on the outside wall of what had been the synagogue to commemorate the Jews of Louny who were murdered in the Holocaust.

On November 2, 2014, the congregation of Old York Road Temple-Beth Am rededicated their three Czech Holocaust Torah scrolls on the 50th anniversary of their rescue from the ashes of 153 Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis. They also honored the legacy of the murdered Jews. The ceremony included presentations of the history of each town and a special memorial service held in the Sanctuary. More than 300 members of the Old York Road Temple-Beth Am community and dignitaries attended. 

On June 20, 2016, a group of “Beth Amnicks,” members of the Morawetz family, and representatives of the Czech Republic Jewish community attended a ceremony in Svêtlá nad Sázavou that was initiated by Beth Am. There they dedicated a memorial plaque donated by their synagogue in memory of Svetla’s 55 Jews who were deported on June 13,1942 and murdered by the Nazis.

Today there are no Jews in Svêtlá. The plaque was placed in the Town Hall of that village. Annually since then, a municipal ceremony is held in front of the plaque with the Mayor and Town Officials.