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European Sites of Holocaust Memory (ESHEM)
 

St Martin Jewish Cemetery 1940 – 1945 / Le Cimetière juif de Saint-Martin 1940 – 1945

public sector
ESHEM members

Overview

Island Hebrew Congregation

The St Martin Jewish Cemetery in Mauritius contains the graves of the 128 Jewish refugees who died during their internment in the camp in the nearby Beau Bassin prison. The graves are marked with the name, origin, and age of the deceased. They came from Europe, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Germany, and other countries, and included about 100 former prisoners of Dachau and Buchenwald.

The cemetery is open to the public every day. The adjacent memorial, open three times a week and staffed by trained guides, presents the history of the Jewish detainees in depth, while the cemetery offers a powerful and immediate emotional encounter with this past. This little-known site is, however, well documented in the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Yad Vashem, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.