Editor: Dr Saul Issroff
Copyright © 2007 Saul Issroff, Mike Getz, SAfrica SIG
and Jewishgen Inc.
URL: http://www.jewishgen.org/SAfrica/cemeteries/10/index.htm
Date: 6 September 2007

Information obtained from Ora Leshem, Israel, 2007.
 
"The Jewish Cemetery of Willowmore is kept in pristine condition. The surrounding wall is a high solid structure. Bolster masonry is on both sides of an ornamental gate. It all needs repainting again. The gates are kept locked.
 
There is a huge Robinia tree, native to the Cape in the left-hand corner of the Cemetery. In the spring it comes out in racemes like wisteria of a white/mauve colour, then the leaves come after the flowers. It is a beautiful tree.
 
Around the inner sides of the walls are red geraniums and arctoris presently in bloom. The whole place is neat and tidy and pretty. There are eleven graves all close together, with only their surrounding edges of cement. There is absolutely no indication of who they may have been. We believe it is a whole family; father, mother and nine children who died in the great flu epidemic. They have been quite forgotten, or maybe there were no other members of the family. But it is a really sad story and one that is worth finding out. It seems that the records were deliberately burnt by the incoming new Govt. of 1994.
 
There is one headstone written in Hebrew but it is now so faint that one cannot read it. The bad part of all this is that the new Govt. have built "match-box cheap and ugly" honeycomb estates rights up close to the Jewish cemetery and there are monumental piles of refuse all around the area, but none inside. A coloured man takes care of the place and is paid R200.00 a month by someone in Oudsthoorn to do so."