The largest city and capital of Libya, situated in the northwest of the country in Tripolitania, on the Mediterranean coast.
CEMETERY: "The city of Tripoli recently built a new highway and a harbor over and around a large Jewish cemetery. The desecrated land contained the Tripolitanian Jews, as well as the bodies of Jewish soldiers who fell fighting with the Eighth Army's Jewish units in World War II." Source: Freedman, Warren. World Guide for the Jewish Traveler. NY: E.P. Dutton Inc, 1984. Source: Bernard Kouchel: [March 1994].
Colonel Gaddafi destroyed an 130-acre Jewish cemetery in Tripoli and built over it, casting the graves into the sea, while the international community stood by. Libya's ancient Jewish synagogues were allowed to fall into ruin or be turned into mosques, Libyan Jewish leader Meir Kachlon tells Israel National News. He hopes the dead will take revenge on the cruel dictator. "There was a whole cemetery in Tripoli, 130 acres in size, on top of which buildings were constructed, complete with roads and everything," said Kachlon. "Qaddafi crushed all the graves and threw them into the sea. The world was silent. When they saw him doing it, nobody asked: ‘What is he doing to that cemetery? Why did he destroy the Jewish cemetery?'" Source. [March 2011]
Jewish Population in 1906 - 15,000. Source: Harvey E. Goldberg: The Book of Mordechai - A Study of the Jews of Libya" p. 170. Selections from writings of Mordechai Hakohen (1856-1929).