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Cemetery, Khenchela, Algeria

Description

Located a block from Rue de la Palestine, the now-closed cemetery is described as "mixed" because it contains both Christian and Jewish graves. The most recent photos appear to be from 2014 and feature several graves belonging to the Elbaz family. (1) While there are allegedly still Jews living in the area and despite the Algerian regime reportedly receiving funding from France for its upkeep, the cemetery has fallen into disrepair, becoming a dumping ground and purportedly a popular spot for drug dealers and prostitutes. Worse, remains have been disinterred. In 2016, a FB commentor cited Islam's prohibition on disrespecting the dead, adding: "what's happening now has nothing to do with religion."(2) Pictures posted on Facebook in March 2023 depict a mummified arm strewn on a street, where children allegedly played with it (not shown).(3) The posters of these picture as well as other commentors expressed outrage.

Algerian-born French Professor Benjamin Stora's father, Maurice, is from the town, which he describes as "a mysterious place from my childhood where my sister went every summer, and I never did."(4) In preparation for writing Les trois exils. Juifs d’Algérie, Stora visited Khenchela,

[i]n November 2004,... for the first time with my son Raphaël. I discovered this city in eastern Algeria between the Aurès massif and the Nementchas plateaus, in what, over time and exile, became for us the crucible of origins. Just fifty years after the start of the Algerian War, I also wanted to see the place where the first shots were fired against the French[1].

The cinema no longer existed, the synagogue had disappeared, but we were able to enter one of the old family homes. There I met a tired, sick, emotional old man who had been to primary school with my father. And then, I listened to a former independence activist from the 1950s explain to a crowd of stunned young people[2] who knew nothing about the long Jewish presence in Algeria, how my grandfather's brother, Elie Stora, then deputy to the mayor of the city, had saved from death Algerians arrested by French paratroopers in 1957. We also lingered in the old Jewish cemetery. Searching the collapsed tombs for the names of my ancestors, I surveyed this desolate, half-destroyed space where a few columns stood, while others lay, broken, eaten by the brush. I measured there, as in each of my visits to the cemeteries of this country, the erasure of our history, that of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Maghreb... It is difficult, between these ruins, not to succumb to a morose meditation and a little vain.

[1] In 1954, Khenchela was a small town of 11,000 inhabitants, occupying a strategic position in the Algerian war which was beginning. The town is in fact at the outlet of the passage which opens between the Aurès massif and the Nementchas plateau.
[2] Most young Algerians born after independence in 1962 know nothing about the long Jewish presence in Algeria.(5)

Khenchela, Algeria

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