Last week, vandals went into a Jewish cemetery on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Swastikas were scrawled on gravestones in Victoria’s historic Emanu-El Jewish Cemetery.
The vandalism was reported Saturday night (Dec. 31/11) and occurred the same day because a caretaker had been there a day before.
Rabbi Harry Brechner wrote an open letter calling on the vandals to confess and to “come clean the gravesites, and when you are through take a tour with me around the cemetery and meet some of the people who lived through Nazism.”
Both the cemetery and the Emanu-El synagogue date back to the 1860s, and the cemetery is the oldest Jewish burial ground in western Canada. The synagogue is Canada’s oldest Jewish house of worship in continuous use, according to the Victoria newspaper, the Time-Colonist.
The images speak for themselves. Sadly, the Jewish souls buried there cannot.
To those family members still alive, allow me to say…
“Hamakom y’nachem etchem b’toch sh’ar aveylei Tziyon viYirusholayim”
(May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem)
koshersamurai 