Illustrative: In this photo taken on July 16, 2012 documents coming from the Archives of Paris Police Prefecture and showing lists of Jewish people registered during WWII, are presented for an exhibition of French archives on Shoah in Paris. (AP/Remy de la Mauviniere)
NEW YORK — A trove of religious artifacts stolen from Jewish synagogues and homes in Europe during the Holocaust are now in the hands of US authorities who plan to return them to their communities of origin.
The authorities announced this week they had recovered 17 funeral scrolls, manuscripts and other historic records that were to go on auction in New York City. The items were traced to Jewish communities in Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Slovakia that were ransacked during Nazi rule in World War II, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said in a statement.