Jewish Cemetery of Funchal

The cemetery was built in 1851, the last burial took place in 1976.[1]

Jews from Morocco arrived in 1819 and set themselves up in the cloth and wine trades. The Abudarham family were involved in the Madeira wine industry from the early 1860s onwards.

The Jewish community grew due to the Evacuation of the Gibraltarian civilian population during World War II to Madeira, which included a number of Jews, some of which are buried in the Jewish Cemetery.[2]

Tito Benady, a historian on Gibraltar Jewry, noted that when some 200 Jews from Gibraltar were evacuated as non combatants to Funchal, Madeira, at the start of World War II, they found a Jewish cemetery that belonged to the Abudarham family.[3] The same family after whom the Abudarham Synagogue in Gibraltar was named.[4]

• Synagogue of Funchal
• History of the Jews in Madeira