Knowledge of The Worlds

"Among the Righteous" updated
I just finished watching "Among the Righteous" - it's a very

interesting film, not only telling the stories of some Arabs

who saved Jews in North Africa, but also asking the

question of why this has not been researched and

remembered. These are my notes on the film:

Among the Righteous

More than one hundred concentration camps were set up

in North Africa, by the Vichy French, the Nazis, and the

Italians. A camp in Libya named Giado was where the most

Jews died of all of the camps. An interesting point made by

Satloff is that even though knowledge of these camps had

been forgotten for a long time, the movie Casablanca

(made during the war) mentions concentration camps at a

couple of points, so their existence was certainly known at

the time.

One example of a righteous person whom Satloff found

was an Arab nobleman named Ali Sikkat, in Tunisia. During

fighting in 1943, sixty Jews were being kept in a labor

camp fled the camp in the middle of a battle between the

Allies and the Axis. Their lives were saved by Ali Sikkat,

whose story was published already fifty years ago.

Satloff said that his search for a righteous Arab was

politically loaded: why don’t we know these stories? Arabs

don’t want to be found – it became toxic in many Arab

countries to let it be known that you’d helped Jews. The

problem is that Arab sympathy for the Palestinian people

has prevented these stories from being unearthed and told,

in order not to give support to Israel.

Historically speaking, Jews in Muslim lands lived as second

class citizens (admittedly, usually better than the situation

of Jews living in Christian countries). Jews were under legal

prescriptions (as dhimmis who had to pay the jizya to gain

legal protection), and from time to time there was violence

against them. In the 1930s, the Jews of North Africa faced

a new threat – fascism and antisemitism.

The only Holocaust memorial monument in all of North

Africa commemorates a group of Tunisian Jews who were

deported and killed in Europe – Joseph, Gilbert, Jean

Scemla. Gilbert went to the Ecole Polytechnique (highest

French university), and fought with the French against the

Nazis in 1940.

France’s Vichy government was almost as antisemitic as

the German government. After the fall of France, Gilbert

rejoined his family in Tunis, since he was no longer at home

in France. But North Africa was becoming less hospitable to

Jews – the film shows images of Petain, and the fascist

salute.
The strict quotas of France’s antisemitic laws were

imposed in French North Africa. Jewish businesses were

confiscated, Jews were barred from the professions,

Jewish children were kicked out of schools, and Jews were

stripped of their citizenship.

The Vichy government established harsh internment camps

in Algeria and Morocco, in the Sahara. The
Jewish prisoners were mostly from central Europe, people

who had fled to North Africa from the Nazis in Europe.

Satloff relays testimonies from Polish Jewish survivors who

were liberated by the British. One of the tasks laid upon the

prisoners was to build the trans-Sahara railway. A couple

of the camps in Morocco were in Bergen and Tendrara,

where people died of starvation, insects, exposure, and

illness.

In beginning of 1942, Rommel (general of the Afrika Korps)

entered Egypt. Hitler ordered him to hold North Africa.

Operation Torch, the beginning of the Allied

counteroffensive against the Nazis, landed American and

British troops in North Africa. The video shows the war

cemetery in Tunis, with the graves of 6,000 American

troops (I never knew this).

German troops invaded Tunisia - it was the only Arab

country to be occupied by the Nazis. Once the Germans

entered Tunisia, they began the usual routine of

persecuting the Jews. The SS commander in Tunis was

Walter Rauf, the Nazi commander who had been involved

in organizing the mobile gas killing vans in eastern Europe.

In December, 1942, Rauf rounded up Jews in Tunis. Jewish

laborers were forced to wear the yellow star.

How did Arabs react to the persecution of their Jewish

neighbors? Most were bystanders, a few made their hatred

heard – “you Jews, you Yids, will all have your throats cut.”

Some Arabs enlisted in the German army, others

volunteered to guard the camps, and a few rescued Jews

from Nazi persecution.

Joseph Naccache said that his neighbors had shielded him.

Satloff found his house and the hammam (bathhouse)

where he had been protected. Why did they protect the

Jews? Because Jews and Muslims were like brothers

(speaking to the son of the man who protected

Naccacche).

Satloff showed the marble mausoleum of King Mohammed

V of Morocco, who was king during WWII. He defied the

Vichy authorities and said that in his kingdom there were

no Jews or Muslims – only Moroccan citizens. The Vichy

authorities wanted Moroccan Jews to wear the yellow star,

but the king refused, saying that he too would wear the

yellow star. In Algeria there were Muslim religious

objections to Vichy laws against the Jews. An

announcement was made in the mosques forbidding any

Muslim believer from serving as a custodian of confiscated

Jewish property. The newly crowned king of Tunisia under

Nazi rule told the Jews he thought of them as part of his

family.

To return to the Scemla family. They moved to the seaside

town of Hammamat. Gilbert and Jean decided to fight with

the French resistance. They then tried to escape, with the

help of Hassan Vergany, who was a friend of the family.

Vergany turned them into the Germans, and they were

arrested outside of the German headquarters of Rommel

himself. Joseph Scemla and his two sons were sent to the

old Turkish prison in Tunis. In April 1943 they were sent to

Dachau in Germany with 50 other prisoners.
It was a year before the Germans decided on their fate.

Satloff then recounted the story of Khaled Abdul Wahad,

who owned a farm in Tunisia. Annie Bouqris told of this

Arab landowner who saved her life and the life of her

family. His daughter is still alive, and she said that at that

time she knew that there were some Jewish families on

the farm.

Edmee Masliah was told that her family’s home was being

taken by the Nazis. Her family took refuge in an

abandoned olive oil factory along with other Jewish

families. Khaled wined and dined the German soldiers and

learned that one of them had his eye on a Jewish girl.

Khaled went to the oil press factory and told the Jews they

had to leave immediately, and he led them to his farm,

where they stayed in the stables. This should have been a

perfect hiding place for the Jews, but soon after they

arrived, a German regiment pitched its tents right on the

edge of his property. Khaled told them not to wear their

Jewish stars, so no one would know they were Jewish.

One night when the men were away doing forced labor,

the women and children almost came to grief. Khaled was

still entertaining Germans to keep informed; a drunken

German wandered off into the Bouqris family’s bedroom

and threatened to rape one of the girls. He told them he

was going to kill them that night. At that moment Khaled

showed up and led away the German from the Jews.

That spring the German army was caught in a pincer

between the British and American armies. Hundreds of

thousands of German soldiers were captured. The ordeal

of North African Jews was almost over. Satloff showed a

film clip of Jews in Tunisia taking off the yellow stars.

To return to Joseph Scemla and his sons: they were

transferred to the prison at Halle, Germany, and all were

condemned to death. (Vergany was also condemned to 14

years in jail when the Free French took over Tunisia after

the defeat of the Germans in 1943).

When Satloff lectures in Arab countries about the

Holocaust, some Arabs yell at him, and say why are we

talking about the Holocaust of 60 years ago instead of the

Holocaust of the Palestinian Arabs today (he shows a clip

of man who left his lecture yelling at him). A Palestinian

Arab woman says we can now make a choice for peace,

but many Arabs don’t want to recognize the Holocaust out

of the fear that it means the acceptance of Israel.

In Israel – Satloff asks why haven’t we looked for Arab

rescuers? He presents more stories from Tunisian

survivors – about how they were saved from Germans by

Arab neighbors. Satloff is trying to get Khaled Abdul Wahad

recognized as one of the Righteous – but Yad Vashem has

refused, out of doubt that he risked his life for Jews (which

is required to declare someone a Righteous Gentile).

Knowledge of The Worlds

Thursday, April 14, 2011

"Among the Righteous" updated

Volcano in Iceland -Natural Accidents