There is, in the heart of West Jerusalem, the construction site of the “Simon Wisenthal Centre for the Humanities”. The centre is being built on top of a Muslim graveyard. I remember this site every time Simon Wisenthal’s name pops up and wonder if he was a Nazi hunter or grave robber, perhaps both!
If truth be told, not much more needs to be said here but I will. My first full day in West Jerusalem included walking past the billboard, big, bold and in the face of anyone who happened to be passing in the area. My wife tells me about the graveyard, the future home of the “Simon Wisenthal Centre for the Humanities” certainly doesn’t. She takes me through the park that borders one side of the hoarding and tells me how the park too, is built on top of a graveyard, a Muslim graveyard.
I walked by this area of West Jerusalem on a regular basis. Down ?? street to East Jerusalem, to shop in the market or wander through the old city. My walks took me past the remaining remnants of the graveyard; the part that hadn’t been swallowed up by the park or absorbed into the future home for humanities. Each time I past, my curiosity grew and I wanted to know more about the graveyard; more about how it came to be and who was buried there. I needed to know more because as I was to learn, it would likely be erased; erased by state of Israel — in the name of the Jewish people — like so much of the history of the land and of the people who lived there.