Mauritius doesn’t have a long Jewish history, but it turned into an unplanned prison refuge for a shipload of Jews outrunning the Nazis. Fascinated, we dropped onto that piece of land jutting up from the Indian Ocean.
Photos: Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Ari Greenspan
B
y now we’re never surprised when we discover Jews, Jewish history, and Jewish heroes in even the most far-flung places. So when we decided to add a stopover on the remote resort island of Mauritius when we were planning our trip to the emerging Jewish community of Madagascar, we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed. Plunk in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 705 miles from Madagascar and over 2,200 miles from South Africa, Mauritius — with its 1.4 million people — is indeed what you’d call out of the way.
Centuries before Jews came to the island, though, it was home to the legendary extinct dodo bird — a large, passive bird with short wings and a bulky body that prevented it from flying or fleeing in the face of danger. Before Mauritius was inhabited by island settlers, these birds had no experience with human predators, but once discovered by Dutch sailors in 1598, the dodo’s end was quick in coming. Dodo meat was considered a delicacy, rats and monkeys that escaped from the ships posed a threat to dodo eggs and chicks, while the pigs, goats, chickens, cats, and dogs that were introduced to the island made the dodo’s once peaceful life a daily struggle for survival. The last claimed sighting of the big bird was in 1662.
The legendary bird was not the only one facing the process of extinction, as the island at one time was replete with unique flora and fauna, many of which today have gone the way of the dodo. But there is still much to preserve on this magnificent hub of nature, and one of the leaders in that effort is a man named Owen Griffiths — who also happens to be president of the island’s 100-plus member Jewish community.
We found out about Owen before heading out to the African coast, and he exemplified the Jewish trait of hospitality. From the moment we landed he took us around, showing us the historic Jewish sites and some of the island’s natural treasures. But the most interesting Jewish “site” on the island is clearly Owen Griffiths himself.
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