Vitoria's Cemetery

Among the hosts of Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492* were the 2,000 of the Basque city of Vitoria--and Vitoria watched them go with regret. Eight years before, when the Christian doctors of Vitoria had fled from the bubonic plague, Jewish doctors had come out of their ghetto to minister to the town's sick and dying. Vitoria's city fathers gave their bond to the departing Jews that their ancient cemetery, the Judiz Mendi (Jewish Hill), would never be "touched, wounded or tilled."

Vitoria kept its word. For 4 1/2 centuries, the earth of the Judiz Mendi lay inviolate in the center of the growing city (pop. 50,000). In modern times, all marks of individual graves long lost, it has become a quiet, run-down park.

Last spring Mayor Gonzalo de la Calle found that the vacant plaza interfered with some city rebuilding projects. Armed with the ancient contract, he crossed the French border to Bayonne, where many of Vitoria's exiled Jews had once settled. Seeking out the surprised leaders of Bayonne's Sephardic Jewish community, he asked them to release Vitoria from the terms of its ancient pledge. They readily agreed.

Last week four black-clad Jews arrived at Vitoria's town hall to complete the formalities. In return for their release, the city promised to put any bones found on Judiz Mendi into a memorial, to be built on the spot. Then the Jewish delegates, followed by members of the town council, walked to the old cemetery. Quietly they chanted the archaic Castilian of the Sephardic prayers for the dead. As they prayed, workmen in a corner of the plot began to dig the foundations of a new building, wounding the soil of Judiz Mendi for the first time in 460 years.

* Goaded by the Dominican Torquemada, the King and Queen reluctantly signed an order for the expulsion of the Jews in the same year that their armies reduced Granada, the last stronghold of the Spanish Moors, and their protege, Christopher Columbus, made his long voyage west. The beaten Moslems were permitted to remain in Spain--for a time--at the cost of paying their taxes to Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews were given a harsher option: join the church or get out. Writes Jesuit Historian James Brodrick: "The majority honorably and bravely chose exile."

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