The most important place for pilgrimage of all religions into Tlemcen was the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town. Up to 10,000 people worldwide made the journey to the site. Nonetheless, despite religious freedoms, their community had never numbered more than 5,000-6,000 in the 20th century, and discriminatory laws of had been in force since 1881. After Algerian independence in 1962, most of the small Jewish population evacuated to metropolitan France. The Berber tribes historically professed Judaism. During the colonial period they served in the French Army. French Jews of the Alliance Israélite Universelle paid for a local Jewish school, which closed in 1934, perhaps owing to the rise of Fascism. In 2009 Jordanian sources reported that the Algerian government intended to restore the damaged Jewish tombs at the historic cemetery.