In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert

Author:Martin Gilbert [Gilbert, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-17080-1
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2010-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

13

TOWARDS LIBERATION, AND AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

‘Underpressure of a new nationalism’

In November 1942, as German troops were driven out of Egypt, an Anglo–American force landed in North Africa as part of an Allied invasion plan. Making a major contribution to the success of that plan was a five–hundred–strong Algerian Jewish Resistance group. The group was headed by José Aboulker, who had organised an uprising that paralyzed Vichy French communications and captured strategic points in Algiers on the eve of the Allied landings.

In the immediate aftermath of the North African landings, local Muslims took advantage of the chaos that followed by turning on the Jews, who for two and a half years had already suffered under the severity of Vichy discrimination. A Moroccan Jew, Maurice Marrachi, set out a long list of Muslim ‘abuses of power’ in letters to American and British authorities. His list included the burglary of Jewish homes, extortion of money and, in a coy allusion to rape, ‘passing the night in the company of the mistress of the house.’1

A British journalist, Philip Jordan, described similar crimes after he entered the Tunisian town of Gafsa with the Allied troops a few hours after the town had been abandoned by the Germans. ‘All the Jews in the town,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘have been pillaged by the Arabs acting under German encouragement. Even the doors and windows have been stolen. It is horrible.’2 According to the German military archives, it was Italian soldiers who had encouraged the Arabs to loot the Jewish homes and shops. The German military police, having confiscated the loot, gave it to a local Arab charity.3

Angered at the Jewish relief and delight at the Allied liberation, Arab troops who had been part of the Vichy forces locked the gates of the Jewish Quarter in Rabat, making thousands of Jews prisoners.4 At the same time, following the Allied liberation of French North Africa, the Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres, the FFL) kept the Vichy laws against the Jews on the statute book. On learning of this during a visit to Algiers early in 1943, Winston Churchill insisted that the laws be repealed. It was not a moment too soon. Particular hostility had been shown towards those Jews who had enabled the Allies to come ashore. Bernard Karsenty, one of the members of the Jewish Resistance group that had received the American commander of the land forces, General Mark Clark, on a secret visit before the November 1942 landings, was forced to flee the country. The brothers Lucian and José Chich, who had also helped the Allies, were threatened. Seven Jews were imprisoned.5

Other persecutions by local Muslim rulers continued. On 27 April 1943 the United States Vice Consul in Casablanca reported that ‘it seems indubitable that there is a systematic persecution of the Jews by the Pasha of Beni–Mellal.’ Jews had been expelled from their homes and shops for up to a week, and ‘arbitrary economic measures’ had been directed against them, including a ban on any Jewish trade in vegetables or poultry.

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