The Survivors' Talmud

TALMUD WATCH: See the Religious Text the U.S. Government Printed for Concentration-Camp Survivors. It's considered to be the only edition of the Talmud ever printed by a national government (Lily Rothman, Time Magazine).

The Survivors’ Talmud stemmed from reasons both practical and symbolic. Not only had the Nazis taken the homes, lives and livelihoods of the Jewish people of Europe, but they had also destroyed the artifacts of the religion. Just when many survivors felt they needed their faith or their culture more than ever, the sacred texts of Judaism were hard to come by. In 1946 a group of DPs ["displaced persons"] who were rabbis asked if the Army could help publish a Talmud, as they had no copies available for study. When the Army agreed, an edition had to be sent from New York to be copied, as no complete version of the Talmud could be found in all of Germany.

Just ran across this one, with reference to Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), which was last Thursday, 5 May.