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Q&A: A Torah scroll belonging to a Nazi?

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Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

A Torah scroll belonging to a Nazi?

Question

A Torah scroll belonged to my ancestors.
The Nazis occupied the area and it was lost in the war and in the camps.
At some point, some descendant of the family received it from some community somewhere in the world that holds old Torah scrolls.
There were several clear identifying marks.
 
Now the question is:
Is this a case like “saved from the lion and from the bear, from a flood of a river,” etc., and does it belong to the descendant who found it or to all the survivors?
If the community gave it to him, does it belong to that descendant or to all the survivors?
Did the Nazis acquire it under the law that conquest effects acquisition, like “Ammon and Moab were purified through Sihon”? Whoever stole it from them would seemingly have acquired ownerless property? Or perhaps, since nowadays international law accepts that civilian looting is forbidden, and that is part of the understanding under which wars are fought, maybe today conquest no longer effects acquisition? The practical difference is whether it was expropriated from the murdered grandfather and now belongs to whoever has it in his possession, or whether it belongs to all the descendants? 

Answer

I didn’t understand why this is connected to the lion and the bear. Also, the concepts of conquest are anachronistic. This is just ordinary theft. The question is what the law is regarding a stolen object that was lost by the thief and then found by someone else. At first glance, it seems that the duty to return it applies to the thief himself, because it came into his possession through a prohibition. But once he lost the object, and this happened after the owner had despaired of recovering it, then the owner lost his ownership of the object and it belongs to the finder. Alternatively, this is a case of despair and change of possession. Even so, beyond the strict letter of the law, it is certainly proper to return it to its original owner, for it is no worse than a lost object picked up after despair.

Discussion on Answer

Dubi (2023-04-20)

Lion, with the stress on the first syllable, of course.

Michi (2023-04-20)

🙂

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