Burial rites vary greatly between religions, but they share one common bond: memorialising is at the heart of observance. As Jews, it is not just the burial itself that matters but the period of mourning and then, after months have passed, the stone setting. Every year afterwards we commemorate the yahrzeit and recite the yizkor prayer.

Any disturbance to these is deeply distressing. Even more so, any disturbance to the actual grave of the departed is a horrifying thought.

It is no wonder that the exhumation in 1974 of some 7,000 bodies after the sale of the Sephardi Nuevo cemetery in Mile End has led to such anguish and, yes, horror.

To compound matters, they were then reburied in unmarked mass graves, a desecration not just of those who were buried but of Judaism itself.

Those responsible for this outrage are likely long departed. But if they cannot be held accountable to their faces, they can — and should — be judged by history.

Important as that is, there is a still more important, and pressing, issue. The decay of the bodies from the eighteenth and nineteenth century Sephardi communities means it is close to impossible to give them a proper reburial. But we can certainly give them a fitting memorial that remembers not just the more renowned, such as Benjamin Disraeli’s grandfather and the prize fighter Daniel Mendoza, but each and every one of them.

This is not just an obligation borne of our religious duty, it is a debt we owe to our history.