Cimetière Israélite

Cimetière Israélite is a Jewish cemetery on the slopes of Château hill in Nice, beside another cemetery linked to Léon Gambetta and Gaston Leroux. Several levels hold graves transferred from a medieval Jewish cemetery, including tombs dating to the sixteenth century.

At the entrance, a Shoah memorial presents two urns: one contains ashes from Auschwitz, while the other holds soap made from human fat by the Nazis. A memorial wall records the names, ages, and birthplaces of more than 3,602 people deported from Nice during the Second World War. Further inside, graves recall René Goscinny, Aaron Messiah, Alfred Van Cleef, and Simone Benhamou Ducloux, while marble porticos, broken columns, sphinxes, and symbolic figures show the cemetery’s architectural variety.

One small monument makes the place especially personal: Sylvio’s parents decorated his grave with a train, a car, a plane, and a fir tree. He died aged seven and a half in 1931, after asking for those objects the day before.