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Cemetery at Colum-Bechar, Algeria
Located several kilometers south of Colum-Bechar's center, in the middle of a largely barren landscape, sits an enclosed Jewish cemetery. Colum-Bechar is a new city, constructed by the French as a military gateway to the Sahara in 1903. Why then did the cemetery serving the many Jews who flocked to the new city get established so far away? The answer has to do with a 15th Century rabbi who, after escaping the 1492 massacre of the Jewish community of Tamentit, became the patron saint of Bechar for both Jews and Muslims. The new city's Jewish community was comprised of three main groups: Jews from Kenadsa, Jews from the Tafilalet area of Morocco to the north, and Jews from elsewhere in Algeria (Oran, Tiaret, et al.). These diverse communities lived in relative harmony with another as well as the surrounding Muslim and Christian (largely European) communities. Jews made up about a third of Colum-Bechar's population in its early decades and played prominent roles in the city's life until the community left following Algeria's independence in 1962. Although the last remaining Jew in the city died in 1990, the cemetery remains protected by a wall [1].
Description
Colum-Bechar (also Colomb-Bechar or Bechar) is located about 725 kilometers south of Oran. This new city, which was constructed by the French in 1903, is a road and railroad hub which serves as a gateway to the Sahara. The Jews who settled in Colum-Bechar primarily lived in the "mellah" (Jewish quarter), also called Horwatch. During the 1930s, Colum-Bechar's hospital's chief of medicine, Dr. L. Céard, described the tradtional dress and custosms of the Jewish community, stating: "The traditional dress worn by women reflects resistance to change; men wear the same garb as Arabs, the seroual and the gandoura, and their headcovering is a chechia with a black band as a sign of mourning after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem." Céard also reported that the Jewish population of Colum-Bechar numbered around 667 in the 1930s. Although the Jewish population increased to about 4,300 between 1955 and 1960 when Colum-Bechar became a missile testing base, it decreased after Algerian independence in 1962 when the Jewish community left for France, Israel, and other countries [2].
Sources
[1] Jacob Oliel, "Béchar (Colomb-Béchar)," Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman, Brill Online, 2014, Reference, Wellesley College, 25 June 2014 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/bechar-colomb-bechar-SIM_0005610>.
[2] Ibid.