A French court has ruled that the request of French-Jewish writer Paul-Loup Sulitzer to be buried in a Jewish burial must be respected, despite the objection of his eldest daughter, who planned to cremate his body.
The legal drama took place after Sulitzer's death, at age 78 in the Republic of Mauritius, a small island in the southwest Indian Ocean, where he has lived for the past few months.
After his death on February 6, a family dispute erupted when his eldest daughter planned to cremate his body and bring the ashes back to France.
His youngest daughter, with the assistance of local Chabad Shliach Rabbi Laima Barber, took the matter to a French court.
In their petition, they claimed that her father "wished for a traditional Jewish burial" in accordance with Jewish law, which prohibits cremation.
"It was a race against time," said a source familiar with the details. "If we had not received the court order in time, his body would have been cremated and we would have lost all possibility of giving him a respectful Jewish burial."
After careful deliberation, the court ruled in their favor, that Sulitzer would be laid to rest in the St. Martin Jewish Cemetery in Mauritius, rejecting his eldest daughter's demand.