Wartime North Africa: A Documentary History, 1934-1950

by Aomar Boum (Editor), Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Editor)

Overview

This book, the first-ever collection of primary documents on North African history and the Holocaust, gives voice to the diversity of those involved—Muslims, Christians, and Jews; women, men, and children; black, brown, and white; the unknown and the notable; locals, refugees, the displaced, and the interned; soldiers, officers, bureaucrats, volunteer fighters, and the forcibly recruited. At times their calls are lofty, full of spiritual lamentation and political outrage. At others, they are humble, yearning for medicine, a cigarette, or a pair of shoes.

Translated from French, Arabic, North African Judeo-Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, Moroccan Darija, Tamazight (Berber), Italian, and Yiddish, or transcribed from their original English, these writings shed light on how war, occupation, race laws, internment, and Vichy French, Italian fascist, and German Nazi rule were experienced day by day across North Africa. Though some selections are drawn from published books, including memoirs, diaries, and collections of poetry, most have never been published before, nor previously translated into English. These human experiences, combined, make up the history of wartime North Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503631991
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2022
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	888,372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Aomar Boum is Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco. Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century. They are coeditors of The Holocaust and North Africa (Stanford, 2018), a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award.

Table of Contents

Note to Readers ix

List of Illustrations and Maps xi

Introduction 1

() Publication date; [ ] Composition date; { } Time period referenced

Part I The Rise of Fascism and Nazism as Seen from North Africa, 1934-1940

1 Hitler as Haman [1934] 23

2 A German Agent Poses as a Muslim to Spread Propaganda [1935] 25

3 Mussolini Given a Hero's Welcome by Tripoli's Jewish Community [1937] 27

4 A Fantastic, Anti-Hitler Poem Spared from Destruction (1939) 29

5 A Sheikh in Oujda Predicts a Brutal Conquest by Germany [1939] 36

6 A Jewish Adolescent Ponders Her Identity [1939] 38

7 A Manifesto against Racism {1939} 40

8 An Intrafaith Cry to Oppose Racism (1939) 42

9 The Swastikas Looming Shadow-One Woman's Experience in Spanish-Occupied Tangier {1939-1941} 46

10 Hitler's Military Is Unmatched-An Anti-French Tirade [1940] 53

11 An Ode to Marshal Petain {1941} 55

12 Petain's Portrait [1941] 56

13 Foreign Legion Soldiers Trained at Sidi Bel Abbès {c. Early 1940s} 57

14 A Report on the Poitiers Camp by Leopold Senghor {1940-1942} 63

15 Senegalese Prisoners of War Protest the Release of White French Soldiers from a Frontstalag Internment Camp [1941] 72

16 Famine in the Anti-Atlas Mountains {c. 1940s} 75

Part II Race Laws, Internment, and Spoliation, 1940-1943

17 A French Communist's Arduous Deportation to North Africa {1940-1945} 81

18 The Mellah, Revived-Anti-Jewish Residential Laws in Vichy Morocco [1941] 90

19 A Jewish Merchant Strategically Recalls His Family's Foundational Support for French Colonialism [1941] 98

20 Muslim Algerian Doctors Call for the Reinstatement of Their Jewish Colleagues [1941] 101

21 A Photographer's Lens on the Camps [1941] 103

22 Shoes, Cigarettes, and the Needs of the Interned [1941] 107

23 An Interned Mother Appeals for Food [1941] 109

24 Is a French Christian Diva an Algerian Jew? (1941) 110

25 A Pharmacists Desperate Appeal [1941] 112

26 Racist Laws in Action-A French Officer's Boon Is a Jewish Merchant's Bust [1941] 115

27 A Mother's Struggles under Internment [1942] 117

18 An Influential Psychiatrist Declares Himself Not Jewish [1942] 120

29 Vichy Law Forces Out a Jewish Shipping Agent [1942] 121

30 A Jewish Cinema Owner Seeks Restitution of His Business [1943] 122

31 A Wry Account of Occupation {1942-1943} 126

32 Six Months under the "Nazi Boot" (1943) 130

33 Song of the Oppressed-Lyrical Recollections of an Adolescent Boy in Tunisia [c. 1943] 140

34 Controversial Intercession-A Jewish Community Leader's Wartime Memoir {1942-1943} 145

35 Flight, Internment, Annihilation, Defiance-The Many Wartime Paths of a Jewish Family from Tunis {1943} 158

36 "Swept Up in a Monstrous Whirlwind"-The Wartime Diary of Albert Memmi {1942-1943} 162

37 Sexual Violence in the tiara {1942-1943} 168

38 "Who Is More of a Dog?"-A Radical Poet's View of Internment [1942] 171

39 An Algerian Muslims Memories of Internment {1940-1943} 174

40 Daily Life in Djelfa {1940-1945} 187

41 A Yiddish Account of a Jewish Burial in the Sahara {1940-1943} 191

42 An Internee Seeks Emergency Dental Care [1942] 198

43 A Rabbi in Azemmour [1941-1942] 200

44 Marking the Days of Awe in Sidi Aziz {1942} 202

45 Celebrating Purim in the Bizerte Camp {1942-1943} 204

46 Keeping Kosher and Celebrating Shavuot during the War [1942.-1943] 213

47 After Liberation, Torture {1943} 216

48 Surviving the "Tombeau" [c. 1943] 217

49 A Correspondents Wartime Travails [1943] 219

50 A German Physician Interned [1942-1944] 224

51 A Pianist's Injured Hand, and a Quest for a Visa [1943] 233

52 A Doctor in the Bou Azzer Mines [1943-1944] 238

53 Shorn of Her Curls-Internment in Giado through a Young Girl's Eyes {1942} 241

54 Libyan Jewish Holders of British Passports Languish in Italian Camps {1943-1945} 249

55 Refugee Forced Labor in Casablanca [1943] 255

56 Muslims Protecting Jewish Neighbors in a Poor Libyan Town {1943} 259

57 Internment in Drancy-A Young Algerian Jew's Account {1943} 260

58 A "Total Violation of Human Dignity"-Girlhood Interrupted in Auschwitz {1944} 266

59 Olympian, Victim, Survivor (1942-1946) 271

Part III The Late- and Postwar Era, 1943-1950

60 Lmirikan (1942) 281

61 Hitler's Haggadah (c. 1945) 283

62 A Moroccan Adolescent's View of Operation Torch and His American Employers {1942-1947} 286

63 The Politics of Cotton and the Postwar Struggle for Power [1943] 291

64 A Moroccan Soldier Serves the Colonial, Vichy, Free French, and American Regimes {1906-1942} 294

65 Singing the Praises of American Troops in Tunis (c. 1943) 296

66 American "Liberators" Perpetuate Sexual Violence [1943] 299

67 American Power and the Politics of "Seduction" [1943] 300

68 The Politics of Hunger [1943] 302

69 The Appeal of an Austrian Lieutenant [1943] 305

70 An Unequal "Liberation"-Sustained Internment after Operation Torch [c. 1944] 308

71 A Manifesto of the Formerly Interned [1943] 315

72 Polish Internee, Political Chameleon [1943] 317

73 The "Infinite Prolonging of Their Internment"-Forced Labor after Operation Torch [1943] 319

74 A Moroccan Jewish Community Seeks to Rescue Jewish Children from Occupied Hungary [1944] 321

75 Director of the Free French Colonial Troops Recommends Deportation of Mixed-Race Couples to Madagascar [1945] 325

76 A Memorial to the "Martyrs" of Tunis (1946) 327

77 A Yom Kippur Prayer for Tunisian Victims of the Third Reich (1946) 331

78 The Long Shadow of Colonialism-Seeking Legal Rights in the Sahara [1948] 333

79 A Libyan Jewish Rabbinical Student Tries to Emigrate to Palestine (1949) 334

80 Bearing a "Weird" Tattoo-A Survivor of the Nazi Camps Returns to Tlemcen {1950} 340

Acknowledgments 347

Index 351

Editorial Reviews

"Wartime North Africa is an essential and groundbreaking addition to scholarship of the Second World War. With great care and intelligence, Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein draw an intimate picture of the region. This is a book as beautiful as the people it portrays."—Laila Lalami, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Moor's Account

"This brilliantly curated selection of personal histories illuminates the diversity and complexity of the North African region, culturally and politically, before, during, and just after the war. Wartime North Africa captures a broad spectrum of the lived experience of civilians across the region. Revelatory!"—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

"A game-changer. Wartime North Africa comes as a revelation. This archive of little-known, multilingual sources makes it possible—no, necessary!—to include discussion of North Africa, with its complex layering of colonialism, nationalism, and fascism, in any classroom that takes up World War II and the Holocaust."—Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory and The Implicated Subject

From the Publisher