The graves of 66 Jewish detainees on the island of Mauritius
who died during the Second World War were reconsecrated at a
special ceremony organized by the South African Jewish
community in May this year.
Mauritius, now an island republic in the Indian Ocean about
1800 kilometers off the East African coast, was the holding
place for nearly 1700 Jewish refugees from Nazism who were
denied entry to Palestine by the British authorities in the
early years of the war. The refugees were redirected to
Mauritius, at the time a British colony, where they held in
a detention camp for the four years and seven months.
One hundred twenty-seven of the detainees died during this
period and were buried on the island in what is now called
the St. Martin's Jewish Cemetery. The majority of the
survivors succeeded in ultimately settling in Israel.
The Mauritius Jewish cemetery has been owned since 1946 by
the South African Jewish Board of Deputies which, during the
war, played a leading supportive role to the detainees.
Through the Board of Deputies, South African Jews sent such
things as food and medicines, religious items such as
siddurim and reading material, to Mauritius. For a
time, the cemetery was voluntarily cared for by Jacques
Desmarais, a non-Jewish native of Mauritius. Major
restorative work to the matzeivot, which had
weathered badly as a result of their being made from soft,
volcanic rock, took place during the 1980s, and in 2000 and
2001 new stones containing all the information on those
interred were cemented into the bed of all the
kevorim.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, spiritual leader to the African
Jewish Congress which is run by the Jewish Board of Deputies
in South Africa, officiated at the reconsecration service.
Last year Rabbi Silberhaft officiated at the first bar
mitzvah to be held in Mauritius since the war. There are
today about 40 Jews living on Mauritius, none of whom have
any connection with the original detainees. Mauritius itself
is mainly Hindu and Christian with a large Moslem
minority.
