Torah scroll returns home from space

A small Torah scroll that was brought out of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp returned home from space with the Atlantis space crew.

To honor the memory of her husband, Ilan Ramon, and the crew of the Columbia space shuttle, Rona Ramon asked Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean to take a Torah scroll aboard the Atlantis space shuttle. She asked Professor Henry Fenichel for his scroll. Fenichel was a survivor of Bergen-Belsen camp.

The scroll was returned to Professor Fenichel at a ceremony at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Fenichel is a professor of physics in Cincinnati and a child survivor of the Holocaust.

Ilan Ramon originally took the scroll into space on the Columbia space flight. The scroll, belonging to Tel Aviv University Professor Joachim Joseph, a Holocaust survivor, never made it home when the Columbia crashed upon its return to earth. Ramon was the son of an Auschwitz survivor.