Cemetery at Medea, Algeria

Medea, Algeria

Located just south of Medea's rail yard, the Jewish cemetery is a small plot of land tucked away behind a wall. Several of the tombstones feature grand decorative sculptural ornamentation. Others are simple rectangles. Also buried here is the Rabbi Jacob Choukroun of Medea, who died on March 27, 1957, after being assaulted outside the door of the city's synagogue. His assassination sent shockwaves through the Jewish community and signaled that the growing uprising against French rule in Algeria would have dire consequences for Algerian Jews.

Description

Médéa: The Algerian city of Médéa (alternate spellings: al-Madiya, Lamdiya), known in antiquity as Lambdia, is located 55 miles (88 km) south of Algiers, at an altitude of 3,018 feet (920 meters) on the Tell Atlas, a plateau dominating the north between the Blida Atlas and the Titteri Mountains.[1]

Jewish Community: Jews may have lived in the area in ancient times, but the state of Médéa’s Jewish community, if any, during and after the Islamic conquest is unknown. The community was revived in the fifteenth century by Jewish settlers from Spain. When the French invaded Algeria in 1830, there were several hundred Jews in Médéa.[2] During the several years of conflict between the French and the amīr ‘Abd al-Qadir for control of the town, the Jews, who supported the French, suffered at the hands of the bey of Médéa, who had been appointed by ‘Abd al-Qadir.[3] It was only in 1840 that the French permanently occupied the town. Under French control the Jewish population grew from 529, according to the census in 1841, to about 658 in 1851; by 1881 it had reached 1,460.[4] In the twentieth century the Jewish population of Médéa declined from about 1,005 in 1921 to 529 in 1941.[5] French culture and language were slow to take hold in Médéa, which was a poor community. Under French rule, all of the town’s jewelers were Jewish, as was the case in many Algerian cities. From 1831 to 1861, the head rabbi of Médea was Yéchoua Elkaïm.[6] The Jews of Médéa were politically active and stood up for their beliefs during the wave of antisemitism that spread through Algeria during the Dreyfus Affair.[7] Many of the town’s Jews were attracted by Zionism, and 179 of them joined the World Zionist Organization in 1910.[8] During the Algerian war of independence, ten Jews were killed, including the chief rabbi, Jacob Chekroun, in March 1957. Armed attacks and economic boycotts during the war undermined the community, whose organized existence soon came to an end.