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Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation suffered greatly during the Holocaust and World War II.
There were 400,000 Jews in France on the other side of the Mediterranean in North Africa (French Algeria, which was an integral part of metropolitan France, the French Protectorate in Morocco and the French protectorate of Tunisia). They were included in the number relevant to "the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe" under: "France/unoccupied territory 700,000 (see Sir Martin Gilbert's the Dent Atlas of the Holocaust, p. 99)
Like the Jews of Denmark, the Jews of Europe's four territories in North Africa were spared the mass deportations that happened in some countries and territories under Nazi occupation or in the German sphere of influence.
Libya was under Italian rule. The Jews, who were British and Italian subjects, suffered from antisemitism and economic restrictions as a result of the strengthening of Italy's relationship with Germany. From 1942, laws of racial discrimination were activated in Libya. Men between the ages of 18 and 45 were recruited to forced labor and thousands died from hunger and epidemics. In February of that year, the Germans ordered the transfer of the Jews to concentration camps. [1]
Vichy France (that ruled in Algeria from 1940) cancelled the citizenship of the Jews and instituted the same restrictions that applied to the Jews in metropolitan France. It forbade them from working for the government or as bankers, teachers and students. In addition, the number of Jews permitted to work in free professions was limited. [2] In 1941, the property of the Jews was confiscated however Islamic religious leaders throughout Algiers delivered sermons warning Muslims against participation in schemes to strip Jews of their property. [3] The suffering of the Jews of Algeria was worsened by their previous high position in society. In 1941, some Jews joined the anti-Nazi underground. Many Jews were caught and were sent to labor camps or were executed. The Judenräte required assistance in preparation of materiel. In November 1942 Algeria was liberated by Anglo-American forces. In 1943, the restraints on the Jews of Algeria were officially cancelled. [2]
Tunisia was also ruled by pro-Nazi Vichy France, which extended its anti-Jewish measures to Morocco and Algeria. In November 1942 Nazi Germany occupied French Tunisia for six months, until May 1943. SS Oberstrumbannführer Walter Rauff, a brutal and notorious killer involved in the development of death gas vans and the Final Solution in Eastern Europe, was posted as commander of Tunis. From July 1942 until May 1943, he headed an Einsatzkommando to take care of the Jewish Question in Tunisia, and to continue to implement the Final Solution in Vichy Tunisia. Oswald Pohl, charged by Himmler to organize the camps in Eastern Europe, joined him. Despite constant attacks by the Allies, Rauff instigated drastic anti-Jewish policies.
The Nazis established a local Judenrat, took hostages, confiscated the property of the Jews (aryanization) and imposed on the community heavy financial punishments. The community was required to provide the needs of the German army, and the synagogue become a German storeroom. [2] The Jews were marked with the yellow badge, 5,000 Jews were sent to more than 30 slave labor camps in Tunisia and a few were sent to the extermination camps. Many Jews were murdered by means of being shot in their homes, death marches, hunger, disease and bombings.
In 1940, the Nazi-controlled Vichy government issued antisemitic decrees excluding Jews from public functions and imposing the wear of the yellow Star of David. [2] Sultan Mohamed V refused to apply these laws and, as sign of defiance, insisted on inviting all the rabbis of Morocco to the 1941 throne celebrations. [4]
While not under occupation by Nazi Germany, Iraq was, for a short term, under the Nazi-allied regime of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. While the regime did not last long, the Farhud (a pogrom in which 180 Jews died) is considered among its results.
Prior to the war there was a small Jewish presence in Japan, particularly Kobe, which consisted of Jews originating predominantly from Russia, as well as those from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the United States. In Japanese-occupied China there was a more significant Jewish population, including White Russian refugees and Baghdadi Jews. [5] As Jewish persecution in Europe stepped up, an increasing number of refugees travelled to China by steamship or had transited through the Soviet Union and were hoping to move on to the United States. Most of these Jews were concentrated in the Shanghai International Settlement. [6]
When Japan entered the war, many Jews were interned, including the Baghdadi Jews who were identified as British subjects. The Japanese implemented strict measures to control the activities of the Shanghai ghetto, which was restricted in 1943 to a one square mile city block shared with 100,000 Chinese. However despite repeated requests from Nazi Germany to implement antisemitic policies, including exterminating the Jewish population in the Shanghai ghetto, the Jewish population was generally left alone (apart from wartime privations). [6]
As late as 1939, the estimated combined population of the Jewish communities of Haiphong, Hanoi, Saigon and Tourane in French Indochina numbered approximately 1,000 individuals. [7] There were also reportedly eighty Jews in Tonkin during the period of Vichy rule, of which forty-nine were in the military and twenty-seven were in the foreign legion. [8]
In 1940 the antisemitic Vichy French Law on the status of Jews was implemented in French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) by its Governor Jean Decoux. In November 1940, Jewish people were limited to certain professions, and in July 1941 Jewish children were not allowed to be more than 2% of public school students. By October 1942, fifteen government employees were dismissed from their positions for being Jewish (among the fifteen was Suzanne Karpelès, the director of the Buddhist Institutes in Phnom Penh [9] and Vientiane), and Jews were "fired from a wide range of professions, from banking to the insurance, advertising, administration and business sectors." One such individual, Leo Lippmann, the former director of the Hanoi tram company, was dismissed from his position even after resigning from his post to assume a lesser position. [10] However, since he had been categorized as a Jew because he had two Jewish grandparents and a Jewish wife, Lipmann divorced and no longer fell under the Jewish Statute. [11] When it was deemed by state officials that the statute would have an adverse effect upon their racial Vichy motives for the region – such as the case of Georges Coedès, an employee at the government sponsored École française d'Extrême-Orient (French School of the Far East), who was deemed useful by the resident superior of Tonkin – an exemption to the discriminatory laws could be made. [12] The anti-Jewish laws were repealed in January 1945. [13]
Although reports differ, there were roughly 30,000 Jews in Syria and 20,000 in Lebanon at the beginning of World War II. Following the Fall of France in June 1940 and the establishment of the Vichy Government, the situation for these Jews drastically deteriorated. The new anti-Jewish laws of Vichy were extended to the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. Henri Dentz, High Commissioner in Syria, intended to establish concentration camps, but the British and Free French forces took over the territory before he could. [14] Nonetheless, a prison camp for European Jews under the mandate was established in the mountains, although it was later shut down by the Allies. [15] Around 1,350 Syrian Jews escaped to Palestine in a complicated operation as part of the Aliyah effort. [16] In 1941, Charles de Gaulle officially annulled the anti-Jewish legislation in Syria and Lebanon. [17]
Maghrebi Jews or North African Jews are ethnic Jews who had traditionally lived in the Maghreb region of North Africa under Arab rule during the Middle Ages. Established Jewish communities had existed in North Africa long before the arrival of Sephardi Jews, expelled from Portugal and Spain. Due to proximity, the term 'Maghrebi Jews' sometimes refers to Egyptian Jews as well, even though there are important cultural differences between the history of Egyptian and Maghrebi Jews. These Jews originating from North Africa constitute the second largest Jewish diaspora group.
The history of Jews in Algeria goes back to Antiquity, although it is not possible to trace with any certainty the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews in what is now Algeria. In any case, several waves of immigration helped to increase the population. There may have been Jews in Carthage and present-day Algeria before the Roman conquest, but the development of Jewish communities is linked to the Roman presence. Jewish revolts in Israel and Cyrenaica in the 1st and 2nd centuries certainly led to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from these regions. Jewish proselytizing among the Berbers is an established historical fact, but its importance remains debated.
The history of the Jews in Tunisia extends nearly two thousand years to the Punic era. The Jewish community in Tunisia is no doubt older and grew up following successive waves of immigration and proselytism before its development was hampered by anti-Jewish measures in the Byzantine Empire. The community formerly used its own dialect of Arabic. After the Muslim conquest of Tunisia, Tunisian Judaism went through periods of relative freedom or even cultural apogee to times of more marked discrimination. The arrival of Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula, often through Livorno, greatly altered the country. Its economic, social and cultural situation has improved markedly with the advent of the French protectorate before being compromised during the Second World War, with the occupation of the country by the Axis. The creation of Israel in 1948 provoked a widespread anti-Zionist reaction in the Arab world, to which was added nationalist agitation, nationalization of enterprises, Arabization of education and part of the administration. Jews left Tunisia en masse from the 1950s onwards because of the problems raised and the hostile climate created by the Bizerte crisis in 1961 and the Six-Day War in 1967. The Jewish population of Tunisia, estimated at about 105,000 individuals in 1948, numbered around 1,000 individuals as of 2019. These Jews lived mainly in Tunis, with communities present in Djerba.
Léon Poliakov was a French historian who wrote extensively on the Holocaust and antisemitism and wrote The Aryan Myth.
Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic (1871–1940) opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party (PCF) by the government of Édouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis.
Anti-Jewish laws were enacted by the Vichy France government in 1940 and 1941 affecting metropolitan France and its overseas territories during World War II. These laws were, in fact, decrees of head of state Marshal Philippe Pétain, since Parliament was no longer in office as of 11 July 1940. The motivation for the legislation was spontaneous and was not mandated by Germany. These laws were declared null and void on 9 August 1944 after liberation and on the restoration of republican legality.
The French State, popularly known as Vichy France, as led by Marshal Philippe Pétain after the Fall of France in 1940 before Nazi Germany, was quickly recognized by the Allies, as well as by the Soviet Union, until 30 June 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. However, France broke with the United Kingdom after the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Canada maintained diplomatic relations until the occupation of Southern France by Germany and Italy in November 1942.
Œuvre de secours aux enfants, abbreviated OSE is a French Jewish humanitarian organization which was founded in Russia in 1912 to help Russian Jewish children. Later it moved to France.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
A number of Arabs and Muslims participated in efforts to help save Jewish residents of Arab lands from the Holocaust while fascist regimes controlled the territory. From June 1940 through May 1943, Axis powers, namely Germany and Italy, controlled large portions of North Africa. Approximately 1 percent of the Jewish residents, about 4,000 to 5,000 Jews, of that territory were murdered by these regimes during this period. The relatively small percentage of Jewish casualties, as compared to the 60 percent of European Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust, is largely due to the successful Allied North African Campaign and the repelling of the Axis powers from North Africa.
Isaac Schneersohn was a French rabbi, industrialist, and the founder of the first Holocaust Archives and Memorial. He emigrated from Ukraine to France after the First World War.
Relations between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and the Arab world ranged from indifference, resistance, collaboration and emulation. Nazi Germany used collaborators throughout the Arab world to support their political goals. The cooperative political and military relationships were based on shared hostilities towards common enemies, such as the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, along with communism, and Zionism. Another foundation of such collaborations was the antisemitism of the Nazis and their hostility towards the United Kingdom and France, which was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
The Holocaust in France was the persecution, deportation, and annihilation of Jews between 1940 and 1944 in occupied France, metropolitan Vichy France, and in Vichy-controlled French North Africa, during World War II. The persecution began in 1940, and culminated in deportations of Jews from France to Nazi concentration camps in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland. The deportation started in 1942 and lasted until July 1944. Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered.
The Holocaust in Belgium was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Out of about 66,000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation is an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. After the Liberation, the center was moved to Paris in 1944 where it remains today.
Led by Philippe Pétain, the Vichy regime that replaced the French Third Republic in 1940 chose the path of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. This policy included the Bousquet-Oberg accords of July 1942 that formalized the collaboration of the French police with the German police. This collaboration was manifested in particular by anti-Semitic measures taken by the Vichy government, and by its active participation in the genocide.
Carltheo Zeitschel also Carl Theo,, was a German physician, diplomat, Nazi functionary and SS-Sturmbannfuhrer (major).
The Second French Statute on the Status of Jews, of 2 June 1941, was an anti-semitic law enacted under Vichy France and signed into law by the Head of the French State, Marshal Philippe Pétain. It replaced the first Law on the status of Jews of 3 October 1940. It included an increasingly stringent definition of who was a Jew in France. It specified a legal definition, of the term Jewish race, broadening its criteria for inclusion and extending the scope of the existing professional prohibitions. From that point on, Jews in France became second-class citizens, while they had since 21 September 1791 been full citizens.
The Study Mission on the Spoliation of Jews in France, also known as the Mission Mattéoli, was set up in March 1997 by Alain Juppé, then Prime Minister, and chaired by Jean Mattéoli.
Antisemitism in France is the expression through words or actions of an ideology of hatred of Jews on French soil.