Ma'alla Cemetery in Aden

Located at the foot of an ancient volcano, the Ma’alla Street cemetery is the most modern of Aden’s (عدن ,עדן) four Jewish cemeteries. Located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the cemetery’s graves face north toward Jerusalem – an unusual orientation as most Jewish cemeteries in the world face east or west towards Jerusalem. Featuring hundreds of tombs in all shapes and sizes – some with gold inscription plates – the cemetery served the community from 1860 until Aden’s last Jews were evacuated by the British in 1967. With no new burials in over four decades, the Ma’alla Street cemetery stands as a silent testament to a once vibrant Jewish community at the southern tip of Arabia – one with roots going back over 2,000 years. In recent years the cemetery appears to have been repeatedly vandalized.