A pulse between science and religion. Between archeology and Judaism. At the end of February, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat transferred to the Israelite Community of Barcelona (CIB) the remains of 84 Jews massacred in Tàrrega in the pogrom of 1348.
They were discovered in 2007, 17 years ago, in the city’s large Jewish cemetery, but have been waiting ever since for anthropological studies to be done.
That did not happen until, last September, two new individuals from the same period appeared at the construction site of a house.
Members of the Jewish community became interested in them and learned that there were a large number of corpses to be delivered since 2007, so the Department of Culture had to commission emergency studies to analyze them in a few weeks and deliver them to the claimants.
They were buried on February 21 in the Hebrew area of ??the Collserola cemetery.
It is not the first massive delivery of corpses that the Generalitat has made to the CIB: in the summer of 2007 it already did so with another 170, to the scandal of the scientific community. Halfway through the archaeological excavation, “pressure from the Israeli community managed to get the Generalitat to give them all the bodies discovered so far,” explains an archaeologist who worked on the investigation. From a historical point of view it was an exceptional treasure, but the Generalitat handed over the bodies “without hardly studying them, violating the Heritage Law.”
The Jewish cemetery of Tàrrega was discovered in 2007. In a few months, dozens of bodies appeared. Some Jewish people vehemently demanded his handover, given that their religion strictly prohibits exhumation. If it has already occurred, they must be buried as soon as possible.
Now it has been something different. After 16 years in the warehouses of the Museu Comarcal de l’Urgell-Tàrrega, the 84 remains that still remained had not been studied.
“The economic crisis came, drastic cuts in culture and those remains were pending study,” admits Marina Miquel, currently deputy director of architectural, archaeological and paleontological heritage of the Department of Culture.
In October, in the midst of the outbreak of the Gaza conflict and in response to the claim of the Jewish community, Culture raised an extra amount of 68,076 euros to finish the studies. He hired anthropologists Núria Armentano and Jordi Ruiz, who between December and February have worked against the clock to do the minimum analysis of the medieval remains.
Ruiz already worked on the Tàrrega excavation in 2007, then under the supervision of the Autonomous University professor Eulàlia Subirà, and today he works at the University of York.
Of the 84 bodies, between 12 and 15 came from individual graves. The rest were collective. The first possibly died of natural causes. The latter were most certainly victims of mass murder.
In the 14th century, Tàrrega was a prosperous town of between 1,500 and 2,000 inhabitants, with a Jewish community of about 300 members. After several famines, the Black Death broke out in 1348, and the Jews were blamed. It happened in various places.
“I have never seen the level of cruelty that these bodies suffer, it is brutal, they cut off their ears, noses, limbs…”, describes Armentano.
Of the 84, a scan has been made of the bones with the most serious injuries, high-quality photographs of the remains with notable injuries, their forensic evaluation, a stable isotope analysis in a sample of 30 individuals to determine regional mobility, and another of the same type to detail animal exploitation practices and the type of feeding, as well as genetic DNA analysis, which will allow us to understand mobility on a broader scale.
The study has attempted to ensure that the samples collected are sufficient for adequate knowledge of the remains, without collecting more than what is strictly necessary, taking into account and evaluating scientific needs and the principles of bioethics.
“If they had not been Jews, we would have been able to study them in much greater depth,” Ruiz laments. “We have done what we could.” The final report will be released at the end of the year.
The technical director of the Tàrrega Museum, Oriol Saula, does not hide his indignation: “It is one of the few sites in the world where you can compare the remains with historical documentation. The scientific interest is exceptional, not only because they are Jews, but also because of the slaughter itself, because of the cruelty. You understand how attackers go first to the legs, to immobilize them, you see the wounds on the arms when trying to defend themselves, the fatal wounds on the head. We have lost a reference collection at an international level. We would never bury Paleolithic remains again, for example, due to their scientific interest.”
Upon learning of the September discovery, the rabbi of the CIB, Daniel Ashkenazi, appeared in Tàrrega. “He asked us to go as quickly as possible but he was understanding. He asked if there was anything left from 2007 and we explained the situation, and he started the machinery to rebury them. We told him that these remains were of great interest and that we had to maintain a reserve, because technology will evolve and it may be interesting to have them in five, ten or fifteen years. But the General Directorate of Patrimoni told us to put it out of our minds. That we had to finish our studies quickly,” says Saula. La Vanguardia tried without success to obtain an Ashkenazi version.
“From the Tàrrega City Council we have had to obey the Department of Culture, which asked us for silence. There was the Gaza war in the middle, with so much tension that there could be a conflict or even danger. We sent a letter to the Department, expressing our opinion. Until now we have not wanted to complain publicly.”
After the 2007 struggle, Culture and the CIB – with the participation of the general directorate of Religious Afers – agreed on an action protocol, which gives the Generalitat two years to study human remains before handing them over.
“This agreement goes against Catalan heritage, but in addition the dead were from Tàrrega. Why are they taken to Barcelona? “Who are the descendants: the Jewish community of Barcelona or the current inhabitants of Tàrrega?” Saula says. The same thing happened in Valencia in the 90s. About ninety corpses from the 14th century appeared in a construction site. Although archaeologists demanded to study them, the Rita Barberá city council decided that religious beliefs should take precedence “above all.” They were buried in Collserola.
“I am convinced,” Saula muses, “that a large part of the Jewish community would be more permissive than some of its leaders and would agree to maintain the collection for future studies. “We haven’t even been able to lift our finger.”
The Museum explains, among other things, the tragedy of the call of 1348. “It would be very interesting to be able to exhibit a skull with the wounds. It would be very educational about what the Jews suffered,” laments the director.
“With the agreement in hand, there was now not much excuse not to return the 84 bodies,” admits Ruiz, “because there has been plenty of time to do the studies. What there has not been is money.”
Saula details: “We are a small institution. We have a very small budget, we dedicate perhaps 5,000 euros to research in a good year.”
In 2007, the study was even more precarious. “Everything was done quickly and quickly,” recalls Ruiz. There were strong pressures that prevented in-depth work. Many skeletons could only be studied quickly in the field, not even in the laboratory, where you can study measurements, age, sex, pathologies… All of this takes time and more if they are corpses with injuries.”
“The pressure was brutal,” adds Saula, “with letters from the federation of Jewish communities in Spain, from the ATID [another association in Barcelona], and even from the American consulate, with surprise visits, there was even a question in Parliament. from Israel… Here those who came were Dominique Tomasov and David Stoleru, self-proclaimed representatives of the Israelite community, along with the rabbi and those in charge of the burials.”
Ezequiel Sakal, president of the Jevra Kadisha, the group of volunteers who assist at funerals so that everything is done in accordance with halacha (religious law), assures that the decision was made by the authorities.
“The bones are now resting again in a Jewish cemetery. It was our duty to recover and bury them. Just like, according to Jewish law, it is a duty to obey the ruler of the place where we live,” he says.
Sakal and León Benmayor, his number two in the Jevra Kadisha, were in charge of the burial 17 years ago and also last February. They used cinder blocks to separate each person’s bones, covered everything with a linen cloth and then with dirt.
Benmayor remembers that an architect named David Stoleru, who today lives in France, was the promoter of the claim in 2007. “He made all the efforts and procedures to get them to give us the skeletons, but there was no pressure, he did it in a good manner. ”, he maintains.
“Yes, it is true,” admits Benmayor, “that there is a lady, Tomasov, who has written unpleasant letters to the Generalitat and to various departments. In a meeting with the archaeologists, in which they were going to explain the findings to us, he started shouting that the Jews should be buried.
In 2007, three rabbis from New York, from the radical current of Judaism, showed up at the funeral in Collserola, Benmayor recalls. “They were accompanied by the then president of the CIB, Dalia Levinson. I don’t know who called them. They came to look at what we were doing, took a photo and left. “It bothered us.”
Benmayor assures that he had not heard until now that the Tàrrega museum was interested in exhibiting some remains to explain the brutality of the pogrom of 1348. “If they had told me, I would not have opposed it,” he affirms.
“Stoleru made a lot of efforts in 2007, but this second time they have given them to us by inertia,” he adds. Consulted by La Vanguardia, the honorary consul of Israel in Barcelona, ??Josef David Sánchez-Molina, explains that “the State of Israel does not interfere in these matters, which are religious. “I’m not aware that there was any conflict.”
The then Minister of Culture, Joan Manuel Tresserras, remembers that in 2007 there was pressure and “a certain conflict, but nothing that could not be resolved with dialogue.”
Its general director of Patrimoni, Josep Maria Carreté – who today heads the Catalan Patrimoni Agency – details that given the intransigence of some members of the CIB “we agreed with the most moderate faction, we did not negotiate anything with the most radical ones. We achieved a good protocol, which is still in force today, which allows us to reconcile scientific interest with respect for their religious sensitivity.”
Carreté denies that anything was delivered ahead of time: “Thanks to the negotiation, we were able to carry out emergency studies and keep a good amount of remains in Tàrrega for later study. Why it hasn’t been done until now I don’t know.”
Due to those unfortunate coincidences of the administration, the protocol had expired when the remains were found last September. Signed on November 16, 2009, with four years of validity and four years of extension, a new version was signed on September 15, 2015. The extension expired just when two new medieval Jews appeared in Tàrrega. Today it is pending signature.
When it comes into effect, archaeologists will have two years to study them.
