Madagascar, formerly Malagasy Republic

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]