Southern Africa Jewish Genealogy SA-SIG
Jewish Cemeteries In Southern Africa
Seventh Avenue Cemetery
Maitland, Cape Town
Editor: Dr Saul Issroff
Copyright © 2004 Saul Issroff, Mike Getz, SAfrica SIG
and Jewishgen Inc.
URL: http://www.jewishgen.org/SAfrica/cemeteries/7/index.htm
Date: 28 May 2004
The Seventh Avenue Jewish Cemetery in Maitland, Cape Town, is in a poor state. I visited it on Friday 21st May 2004 by courtesy of the Chevrah Kadisha.
The cemetery is free of rampant weeds. The small number of existing gravestones suggest that about two thirds are missing. In fact there were many pauper burials and burials of still-born children and these were seldom marked with a stone. Other graves were simply not marked. However, many of those remaining are damaged (lead lettering missing), metal chains missing, eroded, broken or toppled. Further damage was sustained circa 1999 when the south boundary wall along Voortrekker Road collapsed into the cemetery as a result of flooding. Seventh Avenue forms the west boundary of the cemetery.
A large number of children are buried here. A plague in the early twentieth century claimed many lives. I noted the grave of Phoebe Kahn, daughter of Rev. J.M. East, died 10-1-1919, aged 7 months.
R.H.
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