The Memorial Judaico de Vassouras (Jewish Memorial of Vassouras) was originally created to remember Benjamin Benatar and Morluf Levy, two Jews of Morocco origin buried in the ancient Santa Casa de Misericórdia (Holy House of Mercy) mansion’s garden, in 1859 and 1878. At that time, there was no Jewish cemeteries acknowledged by the State.
Partially opened in August 1922, completely opened in 1994, the Memorial was built on a group formed by members of the Jewish Community of Rio de Janeiro (Frieda and Egon Wolff, Alberto Salama, José Kogut, and Luiz Benyosef) and Vassouras (Azuil Lasneaux, Severino Sombra de Albuquerque, and Severino Dias, the mayor then) initiative. After some renovations, the location is situated now in the external area of Museu Vassouras (Vassouras Museum), and Luiz Benyosef is its president.
Kindly conceived by the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, the Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial) consist of nine flower bed in octagonal shape filled with seven cypress trees and three tombstones of Benjamin Benatar, Morluf Levy, and Egon Wolff, which occupy the central flower bed. According to Burle Marx, the octagon would be like a cocoon shape, a bees’ home, in order to symbolize our human condition: at the end of life, we tend to go back to our homes or residences.
Not by chance, since Burle Marx had left one of the flower bed-cocoon empty, the Memorial also have left a space free where one can feel included, symbolizing the “home of all of us”. In this way, this space invites everyone to imagine a more inclusive, tolerant, and fair future.
By acknowledging that the past is always present and that memory is a field in progress, the Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial) has as principle an ethical responsibility before History. Thus, highlighting the pieces of history, with lowercase “h”, and the anonymous, ordinary lives of common people, the Memorial is a calling to think how we inherit, listen, pass on — or silence — the personal and collective histories that constitute us.
At Morluf Levy’s gravestone (also referred to as Miguel or Michel in documents of that time), a wise rabbi inspired by Torah’s, the Old Testament, teachings had written a few words in Hebrew: “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land”.
Taking those words as source of inspiration, the Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial) reinforces the Museu Vassouras’ (Vassouras Museum) commitment to the preservation of Vale do Café territory’s history and memory, remembering and acknowledging the diversity of people and communities that have gone through this territory: Indigenous and African people, Afro-descendants, Jews, New Christians, and migrants of multiple origins, in its own ways of living, surviving, resisting, and leaving their marks in this place.
Ilana Feldman
Curator of Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial)
Roberto Burle Marx’s original design includes the tombstones of Benjamin Benatar and Morluf Levy are present, both buried in 1859 and 1878. Benatar’s tombstone, which had disappeared, was rebuilt in 1992 based on historical documents and thanks to the support of the Cemitério Comunal Israelita do Rio de Janeiro (Israelite Communal Cemetery of Rio de Janeiro), located in the Caju neighborhood. Benatar’s tombstone was placed alongside Levy’s preserved tombstone. In 2005, Egon Wolff’s ashes, deceased before the official opening of the Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial), were deposited in the memorial and today are the only mortal remains in the space, since the others were never found.
Benjamin Benatar (1809–1859)
Benjamin Benatar was born in Gibraltar, then pertaining to Spanish Morrocco, and arrived in Brazil in 1929 when he was twenty years old. After spending a few years in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Benatar moved to Vassouras, where he devoted himself to commercial activities, becoming a successful businessman. He got married and had eight children, all of them were baptized in the Catholic Church, actively participating in the social life of the city. However, his history was not only known for the business he had developed in the city for almost two decades. Benatar, on his deathbed, refused Extreme Unction and expressed his last wish: dying as a Jew. Though, since the only cemetery in the city was Christian, his family requested an ecclesiastic burial. In order to resolve the unusual situation, the Church organized a tribunal, which denied the burial request. Brites Maria da Costa Gavião, Benatar’s widow, then appealed to the Fraternity of Santa Casa de Misericórdia (Holy House of Mercy), which offered the family the garden of the hospital. Considered by Correio Mercantil newspaper as a “laborious and helpful foreigner”, Benatar was buried in April 1959.
Morluf Levy [?–1878]
Morluf Levy, also referred to as Miguel in documents from that time, deceased on March 3rd, 1878, and was buried in the garden of Santa Casa de Misericórdia Holy House of Mercy), following the precedent set by Benjamin Benatar. His tombstone, found in good condition, was written in Hebrew and Spanish, according to the tradition of Sephardic Jews from Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. In accordance with a statement in a newspaper of that time, Levy was victimized by bilious fever and left behind some siblings in Vassouras, including the businessman Abrahão or Abraham Levy, owner of A Barateza store. After Levy’s passing, his family published an obituary notice in Spanish, and two months later, in the same newspaper O Município, his siblings Jaime and Salvador Levy published another note, now bidding farewell to Vassouras: they would be returning to Gibraltar.
Egon Wolff (1910–1991)
Egon Wolff was born in Budsin, then German territory, and was one of many intellectuals forced to flee Nazi Germany due to Anti-Semitic persecution established by Hitler’s ascension in 1933. Wolff took refuge in Brazil in 1936, accompanied by his wife Frieda Wolff, with whom he shared a commitment to Jewish academic movements since their youth in Berlin. Thus, Egon ad Frieda dedicated their lives to rescue the history of the Jewish presence in the country. As of 1970s, already retired, he fully dedicated himself to historical research, producing, together with Frieda, a wide work about the presence of Jews in Brazil since the colonial period. Their contribution had important outcomes here in Vassouras, upon identifying 19th century-Jewish-Moroccan presence vestiges, he conceived along with Luiz Benyosef the first plan for the preservation of local Jewish memory. After Egon’s passing, in 1991, Frieda and Benyosef resumed the project for renovating the old garden of Santa Casa de Misericórdia (Holy House of Mercy), then a nursing home, where Morluf Levy’s tombstone had been abandoned. This effort led to the creation of Sociedade Amigos do Memorial Judaico de Vassouras (Friends of Jewish Memorial of Vassouras Society), chaired by Frieda until 2005. That same year, Egon’s ashes were incorporated into Memorial Judaico (Jewish Memorial). Frieda, who passed away in 2008, have remained as honorary president of the institution.