Madagascar, formerly Malagasy Republic
LOCALITIES ARE LISTED BELOW GENERAL INFORMATION
This island nation is in the Indian Ocean off the SE coast of Africa. The main island, called Madagascar, is the fourth-largest island in the world and is home to 5% of the world's plant and animal species,of which more than 80% are endemic to Madagascar. Two thirds of the population live below the international poverty line.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Madagascar never was home to a significant number of Jews. After the island became a French colony, a small number of Jewish families settled in Tananarive, but did not establish a Jewish community. [August 2009]
The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar based on Paul de Lagarde, an anti-semitic orientalist scholar, who first suggested the idea in 1885 and advocated in the 1920s by Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese and others. [August 2009]