A Manchester synagogue is still to explain what it has done with a historic Sefer Torah that was loaned to it nearly 50 years ago.

The Czech Scrolls Memorial Trust contacted Bury Hebrew Congregation last summer to ask for its return.

But, although the synagogue said it would try to find out what had happened to the scroll, the trust’s chairman Evelyn Friedlander remained none the wiser this week.

“I don’t know where the scroll is,” she said. “Either it has been buried, as they suggested it may have been. Or, if it has not, where is it? I don’t feel they are doing enough.”

The synagogue has not responded to inquiries from the JC.

The 18th-century scroll, which was loaned to Bury in 1966, comes from Loštice in Moravia.

When the trust tried to discover the fate of the Bury scroll five years ago, it was told by a synagogue officer that, although it did not have the records, “conversations all point to us making appropriate arrangements for burial of this Sefer… and our council minutes record that the parchment was in decay”.