Jewish Cemetery, Marsa

The Jewish Cemetery is located in the Ta' Sammat area of Marsa, directly adjacent to Emanuele Luigi Galizia's Turkish Military Cemetery.^[1] It was established in December 1879 and it was designed by the English architect Webster Paulson.^[1] The British disallowed the building of a Synagogue to please the local Roman Catholic church, even if Jewish presence in Malta was of large numbers.^[2]

The proximity of the Jewish and Turkish cemeteries led Lieutenant-Governor Sir Harry Luke to state that the area "is the only place in the world where Arabs and Jews lie peacefully together",^[1] albeit Turks are not actually Arabs – he may have interchangeably used it to mean Muslims.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cares for six graves inside the cemetery: three Commonwealth military burials (one from World War I and two from World War II), one non-war burial and two war graves from other nationalities.^[3]

The cemetery is still in use,^[1] but it is often kept locked.^[3] The cemetery contains the graves of people from Poland, Spain, Russia, Hungary, Australia, China and other European countries.^[4]

The Jewish Cemetery is built in a neoclassical style^[1] – one significant architectural feature is its main gate, which has decorations which are similar to Torah finials.^[1] Below the pediment, there is an Italian-language inscription indicating that the government granted the cemetery to the Jewish community in a public act on 8 December 1879.^[1]

Media related to Jewish Cemetery, Marsa at Wikimedia Commons