La Rochelle is famous for its Old Port and medieval towers. The Jewish presence in La Rochelle is thought to date back at least as far as the 13th century. The medieval community seemed to live on the rue des Juifs, which later became the rue de l’Evêché.

Many of Roche’s Jews were deported during the Holocaust, following a roundup in the département in 1942. The Jewish community in La Rochelle was rebuilt after the war, with around 200 members by the end of the 1960s, thanks in particular to the arrival of Jews from North Africa. Today there are around a hundred families. A little synagogue opened in 1968. It moved in 2017, and now hosts interfaith meetings and secular events.

At the Lycée Dautet in La Rochelle, an educational project was carried out in 2021-2 to give pupils a better understanding of the major stages in the genocidal process. The project was divided into three parts: a study of the testimonies of deportees, a trip to places of remembrance of the Shoah and Jewish life before the war, and a reconstruction of the journey of Jews deported from Charente-Maritime. The pupils worked with a range of media: written accounts, comic strips, trial depositions, photographs of the camps, sketches, fictional and documentary films, etc.

Sources : Encyclopaedia Judaica, synalarochelle.fr