Libya's Jewish graveyards were destroyed. They are being rebuilt online.

• Author: CNAAN LIPHSHIZ/JTA
• Published date: 12 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"I was horrified to see children playing atop the ruins of the Tripoli Jewish cemetery, scampering about debris littered with human remains," Gerbi, who left Libya many years ago for Italy, told the Behdrei Haredim news site in Israel last week.

The experience turned Gerbi into an advocate for what are known as heritage sites in his old community. But over the years, his efforts to preserve or restore communal Jewish sites in war-torn Libya, where no Jews remain, came to naught.

So Gerbi began to consider alternatives. And now, the psychologist who lives in Rome has announced a new effort to set up a virtual cemetery to replace each of the physical Jewish ones that have been devastated in his country of birth.

"Especially in Tripoli and Benghazi, the Jewish cemeteries were obliterated," he told the news site. "So I decided to make a virtual cemetery for our loved ones buried in Libya."

The virtual cemeteries will have sections for prominent rabbis and commemorative pages for victims of the Holocaust — hundreds of Libyan Jews died in concentration camps operated by Nazi-allied Italy — as well as other pages recalling the victims of three waves of pogroms, in 1945, 1948 and 1967, he said.

Users of the website will be able to virtually light memorial candles and dedicate Kaddish mourning prayers through the website interface, he said. "It will be a way to remember the dead of a community gone extinct," Gerbi said.

The initiative is a collaboration ANU: The Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, which seeks to document the experiences of Jews around the globe and over time. Together, they're asking people with information about Jews buried in Libya to reach out.

Their effort is in line with other initiatives that aim to rebuild extinct Jewish communities online because their former homes are so inhospitable to restoration efforts, such as Diarna, a massive website that allows users to explore the cities in North Africa and the Middle East where Jews used to live.

Gerbi's effort is narrower, focusing exclusively on the cemeteries of Libya, where, during World War II, 40,000 Jews lived in communities with a centuries-long history.

The Holocaust and the antisemitic policies of the independent Libyan government that followed, as well as hostility toward Jews by the local population, drove all of them out. By 2004, Libya did not have a single Jew residing in it, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum.

Gerbi's family was part of that migration. They...