Not a single Jewish student or faculty left in city's Jewish Girls' School

Kolkata: Established in 1881 by Jewish stalwarts living in Kolkata, Jewish Girls' School was built to promote education of Jewish girl children. However, owing to the dwindling Jewish population in the city, the school no longer has a single Jewish student or a faculty member.

The school's front gate opens at Park Street, while the back gate leads to Royd Street, which further opens at Elliot Road and Ripon Street.

The last Jewish student in the school was part of the 1981 batch. Since then, there has been no Jewish student. The fall in number began in the 1950s after the formation of Israel in 1948.

"There is no younger generation of Jews in Kolkata left. Kolkata hardly has 20 Jews. It's a dwindling population. All of them are above 60 years of age. The younger generation has either moved off to Israel or America or England, mostly to Israel. The older ones who didn't want to move away have stayed back," the vice-principal of the school A Razeq said.

It was due to this falling number of students that the school management, which is till date all Jews, decided to open gates to students from other communities in the 1990s. It became a hit with Muslim girl students of the area, considering it is an all-girls school and the locality has a lot of Muslim families living there. According to principal M Vincent, the school has students from communities like Sindhi, Marwari, Gujarati, and Bengali, amongst others. The school no longer provided education for free, but the cost remained fairly low keeping up the motto of the school."To keep up the legacy, the motto of the founders that they will give education to girls and the needy people is still followed plus the management is still Jewish, so the name remains," Principal Vincent said.