Comments (0)Ancient Venezuelan Cemetery Being Restored
November 8, 2009Caracas
JTA Wire Service
Venezuelan Jewish groups partnered with a leading developer to restore the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in South America.
The Venezuelan Israelite Association and the Center for Sephardic Studies are working with Constructora Sambil, a commercial developer owned by Salomon Cohen known for building some of the largest malls in Latin America, to repair the 177-year-old Jewish cemetery in Coro, located about six hours west of the nation’s capital, Caracas.
The cemetery had been mostly neglected for nearly 40 years.
“With the magnificent help of Salomon Cohen, we finally had the resources to repair the site,” said Hernan Henriquez Lopez Fonseca, an 82-year old descendant of one of the original families and one of two Jews left in Coro.
The site consists of 165 tombs dating back to 1832. Older Jewish resting places in Brazil, Suriname and Curacao that dated from the 1700s no longer exist.
Sephardim first arrived in the northwestern Falcon peninsula from the nearby Caribbean island of Curacao, establishing a permanent presence in 1830.
Over the past century, the Coro cemetery steadily deteriorated as the Jewish community there, which never numbered more than 200, assimilated and largely lost its religious identity.
By 1970, the Venezuelan Israelite Association officially closed the site to protect it from further damage. But Henriquez, who runs a small foundation to preserve Jewish heritage sites in the state of Falcon, never gave up hope of restoring the cemetery. He is hoping to get the resting place registered on the international list of cemeteries recognized for their universal patrimony.
“My entire family is buried there—my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles,” he said. “I’m on the waiting list.”
U.N. General Assembly to Debate Goldstone
The United Nations General Assembly will discuss the Goldstone report next week.
The international body announced late Wednesday night that it will meet in New York Nov. 4 to consider the report, which was approved earlier this month in Geneva by the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The report accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during last winter’s Gaza war, and it called on the U.N. Security Council to order both sides to independently investigate the findings. The Security Council could send the Goldstone evidence to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for prosecution.
Also Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to support the reconstruction of Gaza.
“Ten months after hostilities ended in Gaza, we see no progress on reconstruction or the reopening of borders,” Ban said at a news conference. “I urge Israel to accept the U.N. reconstruction proposals as set forth, recognizing that the only true guarantee of peace is people’s well-being and security.”
Russian Student Fined for Anti-Semitic Leaflets
A Russian court fined a university for posting anti-Semitic and racist leaflets on a St. Petersburg subway.
Sergey Orlov was found guilty Oct. 30 in Vyborg district court of fomenting interethnic hatred, according to a report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center, the UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union reported.
Prosecutors plan to appeal the verdict, which they said was too lenient. They are seeking jail time for Orlov. The amount of the fine was undisclosed.
The leaflets urged Russian citizens to “act against Muslims, Jews, Chinese, and people from the Caucasus and Central Asia,” Radio Free Europe reported.
Russia’s criminal code prohibits incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.