Anti-Semitism: She was a hardworking wife who saved for a decent grave. Now it lies shattered

Pearl Bernstein kept a small iron box in the wardrobe where each pay-day she would put coins away to pay her bills.

Pearl Bernstein kept a small iron box in the wardrobe where each pay-day she would put coins away to pay her bills.

A frugal woman with prudent working-class values, the family's terrace home had few luxuries. The television - when they finally got one - was rented.

But among her savings Mrs Bernstein made sure that enough was set aside for a decent gravestone. She had saved all her life for a dignified resting place.

Yesterday that stone lay shattered into countless pieces, beyond recognition and repair - one of 100 graves at Rainsough Jewish Cemetery in Prestwich desecrated by vandals.

"The pillow piece with the inscription was okay but apart from the frame of the centre slab, all the earth of the grave was exposed, pieces of marble flung far and near. Three bricks lay nearby. It was heartbreaking," said her daughter Anne Attias yesterday.

"This is shocking, senseless and hurts right to the core. We try to lead decent lives, do the right things, get along with our communities of all denominations and creeds. Something like this just devastates."

The attack on the historic Manchester cemetery was one of the latest in a spate of shocking acts of anti-Semitism in recent months. Just days later, the desecration of a cemetery in West Ham was the 117th attack on a Jewish graveyard in 15 years. Swastikas were scrawled across some of the 87 defaced graves.

Mrs Attias said the attack on her mother's grave in Prestwich a week earlier, as well as the desecration of the other gravestones, left her feeling sick.

Pearl Lewis, the daughter of a butcher from Stockport, was born into what her daughter described as a "two-up, two-down with no bath". As soon as she left school she trained as a milliner until the day she met Reuben Bernstein - a young soldier who had fought in Italy and Africa during the Second World War and survived a torpedo attack on his ship. Upon his discharge, he took up a job as a raincoat machinist and the couple married in 1947.

While Mr Bernstein often brought bundles of work home from the factory to earn extra cash, his wife prided herself on her domestic skills. Rarely over six stone, she was troubled with ill health and lost one child in pregnancy and another was still-born. In the 1960s she was one of the first people in the country to undergo open-heart surgery for a replacement valve.

But she never complained or shirked hard work, taking the washing down to the launderette and making the weekly trip to Bury market to shop for fresh produce. She was renowned for being a good listener, for her charitable work, and her freshly baked kichels (cookies). "She was always a lady, I never heard her swear or speak badly about people. She was a very good woman of valour and virtue," said Mrs Attias.

Shortly before her 83rd birthday, seven years ago, the widowed Mrs Bernstein went into hospital for a routine blood test, broke her hip in an accident and later died of a heart attack.

Her daughter ensured that her wish for a fitting gravestone was honoured, visiting regularly to keep it clean and tidy.

Last week, she was so shaken to hear that it had been attacked that she had to leave work. "When I got home I scrubbed myself and put all my clothes in the wash. The sense of violation hurt me profoundly.

"I could not bear the thought of thugs leaving their footprints on my mother's final resting place, the last earthly link I have of her," she said.

Mrs Attias was shocked to find that her paternal grandfather's grave had also been desecrated.

Abraham Bernstein had grown up in a Russia ruled over by the Romanovs and conscripted into Tsar Nicholas II's army. But his mother feared he would have little future in the land of his birth and shortly before 1917 he left, travelling through China and Europe before eventually settling in England.

He married another Russian émigré, Leah, set up a business as a tailor in Manchester, and laboured until hard work and illness left him blind. "I remember, as a child, he had a lovely braille pocket watch," she recalled. At the age of 73, he died at Southport's home for the blind.

"I feel so sad for the desecrated graves that have nobody to care for them. Some are old and were lovingly inscribed in fancy marble, gold printing, for valued, cherished, departed souls. At the cemetery I saw people wandering round dazed and anxious to see if their loved ones were safe," Mrs Attias said.

"Some people say that when we are dead that is the end, but there is dignity and respect. This is not a religious issue, it is common decent humanity, which seems to be so sadly lacking in today's world."

Muslim Council warns of wave of vandalism

Following reports of a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, the Muslim Council of Britain is to warn mosques about a growing tide of bigotry that has seen hundreds of gravestones in Islamic cemeteries defaced.

The most recent recorded incident was in the cemetery next to St Woolos Church in Newport, south Wales, where 25 headstones were pushed over and damaged on 7 June.

In April, three teenagers who desecrated dozens of Muslim graves at Charlton Cemetery were found guilty at Inner London Crown Court of conspiracy to commit religiously aggravated criminal damage.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the MCB, said mosques would be warned to be watchful of intruders and to report damage. "We are keen to identify how widespread such attacks are, whether they are just isolated incidences or taking place on a regular basis. Then we can look into what should be done," he said.

Arifa Akbar