«Few know about the Jews detained in Mauritius during World War II.»
Four Questions to Anthona Smith
September 1940. A boat carrying 1800 Jews leaves Tulcea, Romania, for Haifa in British Mandate Palestine. The passengers are Germans, Austrians and Eastern Europeans fleeing the Nazis. No one has an immigration permit. Upon arrival, the British officials turn them away. But before their boat can disembark, the Haganah, the Zionist underground activists, sink it, hoping to avert their deportation. Instead, the British put them on two new ships. Their destination: Mauritius, then a British island in the Indian Ocean.
Fast-forward to 2015. The Jewish Detainees Museum opens in Beau Bassin, telling the story of the refugees who survived the war in Mauritius – among them Anna Frank, whose son Vincent Frank-Steiner is a resident of Basel. Naomi Lubrich, director of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland, spoke with Anthona Smith, the museum guide in Beau Bassin, about a little-known chapter of the Shoah.
Naomi Lubrich: Dear Anthona, you grew up in Beau Bassin, not far from a cemetery with Jewish gravestones from the 1940s. What did you know about their history?
Anthona Smith: When I was young, the gravestones were a curiosity about which we knew almost nothing. Every once in a while, visitors would come, usually descendants paying homage to their parents’ graves. Still today, few know the history of the Jewish detainees who survived the Shoah on Mauritius, despite two books written in 1998 by Ronald Friedman, Exil auf Mauritius 1940 bis 1945, and in 2000 by Geneviève Pitot, The Mauritian Shekel. Fifteen years later, in 2015, the Jewish Detainees Museum opened next to the cemetery.
NL: So what happened to the Jews who were sent to Mauritius?
AS: Of the originally 1800 passengers, 1581 remained. Many had died underway. Others died when the Haganah bombed the ship. They were distressed. The British Authorities had left them in the dark for nearly two weeks about their destination. When they arrived on 26 December 1940, the Creole and Indian inhabitants welcomed them and supplied clothing. But two days later, the British Authorities showed them their new home: a prison. The inhabitants obeyed the British appeal to stay away. The Jews’ legal status was undefined: Were they prisoners? Internees? Detainees? Unknown, too, was the duration of their internment. When would they be free? The camp commander was cruel, and his staff, strict. The building had barbed wire, and the officers separated men and women into different tracts, each in a separate cell, even the married couples. The detainees were made to work with no (or very little) remuneration and were not allowed to socialize. The Jews appealed numerous times, and were ultimately successful: One and a half years later, the families were allowed to reunite in private, makeshift tents. Larger groups were allowed to celebrate Shabbat and other holidays, to organize lessons for the children, and engage in cultural activities. Starting in 1942, new couples married, and from 1943 to 1945, they gave birth to sixty babies. What the detainees wanted most of all was to hear the news from Europe and Palestine. They listened to radio broadcasting from London and circulated the most important news via typewritten sheets, which they titled Camp News. The problems they faced, besides the constant worry about family and friends in Europe, were illnesses, among them depression, inadequate nutrition and a typhoid epidemic, which took the lives of many. They were given a plot of land to bury the dead in St. Martin’s cemetery, next to today’s museum. In February 1945, the British finally granted the detainees in Mauritius entry to Palestine and they arrived in Haifa in August 1945, this time to stay.
NL: Who took care of the cemetery all these years?
AS: When the detainees arrived in Mauritius in 1940, there was one Jew – only one – who lived on the island. Isia Birger was born in Lithuania and had emigrated to Mauritius for business purposes in 1937 at age 29. During the war years, he played an invaluable role as a liaison between the detainees, the camp authorities and the South African Jewish Board of Deputees, which offered considerable assistance. After the war, he stayed in Mauritius and maintained the cemetery, where he was buried in 1989.
NL: Does Mauritius have a Jewish population today?
AS: We have a small synagogue in Curepipe and 200 to 300 congregants. None is a descendant of the detainees; all came here for other reasons.
NL: Have you witnessed antisemitism in Mauritius?
AS: Yes.
NL: Dear Anthona, thank you very much for sharing your story.
verfasst am 20.11.2024
Naomi Lubrich
