Mauritius doesn’t have a long Jewish history, but it turned into an unplanned prison refuge for a shipload of Jews outrunning the Nazis.

Photos: Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Ari Greenspan

B

y now we’re never surprised when we discover Jews, Jewish history, and Jewish heroes in even the most far-flung places. So when we decided to add a stopover on the remote resort island of Mauritius when we were planning our trip to the emerging Jewish community of Madagascar, we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed. Plunk in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 705 miles from Madagascar and over 2,200 miles from South Africa, Mauritius — with its 1.4 million people — is indeed what you’d call out of the way.

Centuries before Jews came to the island, though, it was home to the legendary extinct dodo bird — a large, passive bird with short wings and a bulky body that prevented it from flying or fleeing in the face of danger. Before Mauritius was inhabited by island settlers, these birds had no experience with human predators, but once discovered by Dutch sailors in 1598, the dodo’s end was quick in coming. Dodo meat was considered a delicacy, rats and monkeys that escaped from the ships posed a threat to dodo eggs and chicks, while the pigs, goats, chickens, cats, and dogs that were introduced to the island made the dodo’s once peaceful life a daily struggle for survival. The last claimed sighting of the big bird was in 1662.

The legendary bird was not the only one facing the process of extinction, as the island at one time was replete with unique flora and fauna, many of which today have gone the way of the dodo. But there is still much to preserve on this magnificent hub of nature, and one of the leaders in that effort is a man named Owen Griffiths — who also happens to be president of the island’s 100-plus member Jewish community.

We found out about Owen before heading out to the African coast, and he exemplified the Jewish trait of hospitality. From the moment we landed he took us around, showing us the historic Jewish sites and some of the island’s natural treasures. But the most interesting Jewish “site” on the island is clearly Owen Griffiths himself.

Tortoise Pace

Griffiths is a fascinating individual who’s willing to go to great lengths to help the Jewish community. His personal history starts with the early days of the Jewish settlement in Australia, where his great-great-grandfather was shipped as a petty thief at the time the British were using that distant continent as a massive prison colony. 

In fact, all four of Owen’s grandparents were born in Australia. His great-grandfather, Abraham Reuben, was among the founders of the Hobart Synagogue, Australia’s first synagogue building. His maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Leo Rosengarten, was an officer in the Australian military, and Owen recently discovered an item about him from the Sydney Morning Herald in 1919. It seems that he’d gotten into a fracas with another officer over some lamb chops. They were hauled in front of Captain Cohen, a superior officer, for a quick trial. Captain Cohen is reported to have scolded Lieutenant Rosengarten by saying something to the effect of “if this had been over a piece of pork chop, I would have thrown the book at you, but seeing that it relates to lamb, I will let you off with a scolding.”

Owen was trained as a biologist in Australia and today, among his many other communal activities, owns and runs the La Vanille Nature Reserve, an amazing nature park where one can stroll through vegetation in a natural environment while seeing and interacting with giant tortoises, known as “Darwin Tortoises.” They are a true natural wonder. Standing about three feet tall and weighing up to 400 pounds, these amazing creatures can live to 100 years or more — it’s said that some are closer to 200.

Owen led us through the park as we fed and stroked the tortoises, a species he reintroduced to neighboring Rodrigues Island, where giant tortoises once existed and are now extinct.

“These tortoises were once so numerous that an earlier explorer describes getting off a boat, stepping on the back of one and walking only on tortoises for 100 yards before having to touch the ground,” Owen told us. But the tortoises were wiped out from the island when traders shipped them to Europe for their meat and their shells.