An AP article focuses attention on the troubled present and uncertain future of the historic Beit Haim Jewish cemetery on the Caribbean island of Curacao, one of the most important Jewish heritage sites in the Americas. The story told in the article is very similar to the troubled present and uncertain future of hundreds of Jewish cemeteries in Europe (as users of Jewish Heritage Europe will have seen).
Headstones are pockmarked, their inscriptions faded. Stone slabs that have covered tombs for centuries are crumbling. White marble has turned grey, likely from the acrid smoke that spews from a nearby oil refinery.
One of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the Western Hemisphere, Beth Haim on the island of Curacao, is slowly fading in the Caribbean sun.
The cemetery (and the Mikve Israel-Emanual Synagogue) were established in the 17th century by Sephardic Jews from Amsterdam who had found refugee in the Netherlands after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century. Curacao at the time was a Dutch colony; it is now a semi-autonomous part of the Netherlands. Ashkenazi Jews swelled the community’s population from the late 19th century.
The cemetery occupies what was once plantation land on about 10 acres on the outskirts of Willemstad. The oldest confirmed inscription is from 1668 on a stone made of potter’s clay, according to records maintained by the synagogue. Congregation members have determined more than 5,000 people are buried there, but only a third of the inscriptions are legible in a mix of languages that includes Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Hebrew.
The stones are known for their inscriptions and their vivid carved imagery, similar to that in European Sephardic cemeteries such as Ouderkerk in the Netherlands and Hamburg Altona in Germany.
The Curacao congregation is considering preserving the cemetery electronically by setting up a website with records and photos [….] The plan for a digital memorial is still in development, but a lower-tech effort has put replicas of 10 of the most ornate headstones on display at the Jewish Historical Museum in the capital of Willemstad.
These are some of the solutions implemented by Jewish communities and other stakeholders in Europe. Increasingly, digital documentation, including scans, is an option to preserve at least the imagery and inscriptions of stones fast deteriorating through erosion.
Read the full AP article by Karen Attiah
Photos of the Jewish cemetery and Curacao synagogues, by Jono David
Flickr photostream of the cemetery by Paul McClure