Team Blitz India
JEWISH cemetery in Chinchpokli, which has the only memorial in India for European jews who fled Nazi persecution, will be restored in a joint project between the Israeli and German consulates in the city.
The cemetery, which has over a thousand graves, is also the resting place of about 17 German, Polish, Austrian, and Czechoslovakians who were among the 2500 jews who sought shelter in British India during World War II. A majority of the refugees left for the United Kingdom after India’s independence, but a handful stayed back and died here.
The marble tablets embedded in the walls of the cemetery’s small hall, inscribed with the names of the refugees, make the site the only Holocaust memorial in India. The cemetery’s restoration plans will include the installation of a plaque to commemorate the survivors, landscaping, and ornamental gates, among other things.
Work to renovate the cemetery and the graves will start shortly. The memorial will be included in the ‘Jewish Route’ an itinerary of sites associated with the Jewish settlement in India.
Information on the identity and numbers of the refugees buried at the cemetery is sketchy and there is no information if those buried in the cemetery have descendants in India or abroad.
The Israeli Embassy has contacted the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem for help in identifying the families of the refugee .
