When one hears the words "Nazi occupation," one's mind does not immediately think of Africa. However, the fascist regime did reach the north of the continent and severely impacted Tunisia and particularly its Jewish community.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
During the six months of Nazi occupation, thousands of Tunisian Jews were sent to labor camps and lost their lives due to disease or from allied forces bombings while forced to work for the Germans.
"No other country in North Africa was as significantly affected by the German occupation [as Tunisia,] which was occupied between November 1942 and May 1943," Professor Haim Saadoun, a senior faculty member at the Open University, told Israel Hayom.
Saadoun is also the director of the Documentation Center of North African Jews During World War II, which was established at the Ben Zvi Institute to chronicle Holocaust events in the Maghreb.
As part of his work at the documentation center, Saadoun aims to raise awareness for Nazi atrocities in Tunisia. His father survived the Holocaust in Sfax, a city southeast of Tunis, and shared his survival story with his son after many years of silence.
After Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia, they conducted themselves the same way they did in Europe. The Muslim Tunisian government and the French one remained, but the Germans had a significant influence on local policy.
"The occupation of Tunisia during the war stemmed from German military considerations regarding the development of World War II in North Africa," Saadoun explained.
"First, they lost a battle in November 1942 in the area of El-Alamein in Egypt, and second, American forces landed [in Africa] as part of a large-scale operation, called Operation Torch, waged in Algeria and Morocco.
"Occupying Tunisia was a response to these two military events. The goal was to place a buffer between the British forces that moved from Libya towards Tunisia and the US forces that were also moving there, but from Algeria."
The SS men that arrived in the North African country together with the German army were in charge of dealing with the local Jewish population, as usually happened. SS Commander Walter Rauff, who specialized in the extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe in mobile gas chambers, was in charge.
Rauff and his men implemented a policy somewhat similar to that in Europe and established a Jewish community council through which they controlled the Jews.
"The Jewish community had to provide the Germans with at least 5,000 young men between the ages of 17-50, who were used for labor in the German army," Saadoun said.
"The Germans needed the workforce for various reasons, and some Jews were being held in labor camps. Some of these camps were situated at the front line of the war, and Jews there lived in tough conditions and had to do hard manual labor.
"There were 24 camps. We do not know how many Jews were there, but it was thousands. The Germans did not apply an exterminating policy in Tunisia. There were isolated cases of Jews being killed, but it was not systematic. Many did, however, die in the labor camps," Saadoun explained.
"The 18-year-old Jews were sent to labor camps at airports that had been hit by American bombs," Saadoun's father, Yakov, wrote in his journal.
Jews were also sent to work at "the port and the train station. They had to do manual labor and wear a yellow badge to stand out against the French and other nationalities, like Italians, Greeks, and Maltese, etc. Many workers died as a result of their work, for they were bombed by the Americans or the Brits," he wrote.
"The Germans caught my father, a blond 14-year-old boy with blue eyes, [characteristics] that saved him because they thought he was not Jewish based on how he looked," Saadoun said.
"My father wrote many letters that I keep, but he did not talk about the wartime a lot. I originally did not understand why it took him so long [to share his experience during the war,] but it turns out that it was very difficult for him to speak of that time. It was a kind of post-trauma."
"In some cities in Tunisia, Jews would walk around with yellow badges, for example, in Sfax. Their property would get confiscated by the Germans, so were Jewish buildings and valuable personal belongings, and more. That was the first time Tunisian Jews had to face such great difficulties. They never experienced anything like that before. They did not know how long it would last. It was a horrible time for them," Saadoun explained.
"Many Jews in North Africa kept journals and memoirs about their situation during World War II. Leaders of the Jewish community published some of those stories immediately after the war. A lot of information was published, and we have come across more of it throughout the years.
A few years ago, we published a journal of one Tunisian Jew, who "described every day his and his family's experiences – how the Germans confiscated their home, how they were forced to cram together in a single room with another family in the neighborhood in which they lived," Saadoun said.
A lot was written by Tunisian Jews at the time, and "we are calling on people to tell their story because it is important to know what happened to this community. These stories are beyond priceless."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
