![]() In effect, the Torah was in the Gwelo community for more than 80 years and before that in Europe for 20 years – its estimated age is 150 years. “My father took all the services for more than 40 years, and he and my mother kept the community together, especially after numbers started to dwindle. The other members of the Gwelo congregation were either British or German, with no real knowledge of taking services, leining, or Yiddishkeit in general,” says Brom. “My father lost his entire family in the Holocaust in Lithuania. And in recent weeks, he discovered that this park is just a few kilometres from where the Gwelo Torah was eventually found. Soon after, Brom dedicated a park to his brother in Israel. Brom’s brother, Dr Les Brom, died in a car accident in 2005. Not only that, but the family faced more tragedy after Brom’s father’s sudden and early death. So it goes without saying that the family felt closely connected to this particular Torah, which seemed to disappear into thin air in the late 1980s. He was the leader of the community, and held it together.” “My father came to Gwelo in 1936, and was the only one who could read from the Torah. “After my father died suddenly in 1982 at the age of 60, every Jew soon left Gwelo,” remembers Brom. ![]() For almost 40 years, Zimbabwean Brian Brom has wondered what happened to the Torah his father leined from as head of the tiny Gwelo (now Gwero) community in rural Zimbabwe.
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