Zyta Eliahu - February 3, 2008
Jews Interned in Mauritius
Oh, I see. And they, you know, Jews being Jews wherever they are when they settle down, there were a lot of educated people there so one was a ballet teacher so she was teaching ballet dancing. They were teaching people English. My parents learned English so they could speak with me when we would meet. And people learned Hebrew because they were planning or planned to come to Palestine. And my father learned to make shoes and he even made some shoes. And they settled down and they--everybody was working and earning money and it was, you know, like a community. They very much suffered from malaria there. I think both my parents suffered from malaria there. And um, eventually they were able to go out of the camp into the, into the town because before they wouldn't let them go out so, eventually they were able to go out. See, for them Mauritius was a very bad experience, I mean, they suffered a lot. It wasn't--of course it was not--it wasn't a concentration camp, it was a British internment camp. But my mother always said, "You know, Mauritius--it would've--is beautiful as a tourist place," and it's--and now it has become a beautiful tourist island and a lot of people go there. It's developed tourism very well.
It's a whole new, uh...
It's a whole new story...
...story.
...yes. I heard stories the Jews from South Africa used to go--used to take the honeymoon in Mauritius and I'm speaking about the--after the war of course--or to the Seychelles Islands. Now um, my friend--his grandson--it's just sort of a little side story--his grandson married a girl who got a, a stipend to go and study the community in Mauritius. It was so funny the coincidence because my parents had been there and here his granddaughter-in-law was going to study why the Hindu and Muslims get on well in Mauritius. And she studied this and, um...
Is there still a Jewish community?
No, there's no Jewish community there unless it's the odd...
Yeah.
...person staying there now. Nobody wanted to stay there. But if they--I think--they had no--they got their local um, I forget what their export is, if it's cotton or--but they have developed their local uh, trade and uh, I think tourism is one of their number one earners.
Your parents were there until 194...
Forty-five, ye...well, actually my father left...
In '44.
...in '44--at the end of '44 so my mother stayed nearly another year there with my brother. And she came to Palestine in '45 and my father was released from the army in '46 and then he joined my mother here and I joined my parents in '47.
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