Cairo community reduced to just five after matriarch dies
MARCELLE HAROUN, president of Cairo’s tiny Jewish community, has died at 93.
“The Jewish Community in Cairo (JCC) has regretfully lost Marcelle Haroun, one of its pillars who will be sorely missed,” read a statement announcing her death last weekend.
Her passing leaves what is thought to be only five Jews living in the Egyptian capital, the country’s Watani International portal reported.
The five remaining in Cairo, which was home to some 80,000 Jews after the Second World War, are thought to be Ms Haroun’s daughter, Magda, who is head of the community, and four granddaughters.
Thousands of Jewish people started to leave Egypt after Israeli independence was declared in 1948. Many more following the wars that broke out in 1956 and 1967.
The Haroun family is said to have stayed in Egypt considering themselves Egyptian first, according to Watani.
Ms Haroun was known as a Jewish anti-Zionist and member of the Communist Party of Egypt.
In 2013 her daughter told Tablet that Ms Haroun, who was married to lawyer and politician Shehata Haroun, was her father’s “comrade.”
According to AFP there were also 12 Jews living in March 2017 in the coastal city of Alexandria.