
There was no German pressure on Pétain to promulgate racial laws in the fall of 1940, nor was there German pressure on Pétain to apply these racial laws to the colonies of North Africa. In October, 1940, Pétain’s Vichy government, not the Germans, passed antisemitic legislation called the Statut des Juifs. Tunisia and Morocco were French protectorates. Algeria was technically part of France, and its citizens were, therefore, French citizens. Under the armistice agreement, France was divided into two parts: the northern two-thirds of the country (the occupied zone) came under direct German control, while the southern part of the country, with its administrative center at Vichy, a spa town southeast of Paris, became the unoccupied zone, also known as “Vichy France 1.” Pétain’s power thus extended over Vichy France, and over the French colonies in North Africa as well. The armistice with France was Hitler’s way to settle the matter of France and move on to this next great conquest. He had already set his sights on England, and was, in the spring of 1940, hoping for a quick conquest there. Thus, he agreed to an armistice with France in order to ensure that the French navy was taken out of the war and that the French would not continue to fight from North Africa. Hitler had no desire to continue fighting France he was wary of the French and their colonies in North Africa, as he was of the French navy. The Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, resigned over the decision to surrender, and the French President, Lebrun, apppointed a World War I hero, Marshall Henri Philippe Pétain, to replace him. Ultimately, France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940.
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Within a short time it became clear that France was overwhelmed militarily, and the government debated over how to proceed. An article on the Jews of Libya appears separately in this newsletter. This article will discuss the situation of the Jews in France’s three North African colonies, whose treatment was greatly impacted by France’s defeat at the hands of Germany during World War II. The Jews of Tunisia were saved only because in early May 1943, military developments forced the Germans to retreat. The army entered Tunisia together with a SS unit tasked with applying anti-Jewish policy.

Tunisia was the only country among the three that the German army actually occupied. The Jews of Algeria and Morocco were spared the fate of their brethren in Europe because the tide of the war turned against the forces of General Rommel at the battle of El Alamein beginning in November 1942 the Allies began to liberate North Africa. In Morocco, where Jews had civil rights but were not citizens of France, anti-Jewish laws were less rigorously enforced. The Jews of Algeria, who held French citizenship, were stripped of their rights, required to wear an identifying mark, and subjected to admission quotas, even in primary schools. North Africa, The Star of David drawn on a German Tank by soldiers of the Jewish Brigade Group

After being hidden in a monastery for 18 months, he made his way to Chile, which refused to extradite him. He was captured by the Americans at the end of the war, but escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp. He was transferred to an SD Einsatzkommando in Tunis in late 1942. Walther Rauff was responsible for the murder of Jews in Poland and in Russia using mobile gas vans, precursors to stationary gas chambers later used at the death camps in Poland.Irit Abramski, The Jews of Libya and Tunisia in the Annals of North Africa (paper presented in Rome, Italy at Roma Tre University, 2002), p.Eisenhower of the US army was given command of the operation. The plan was for Allied forces to invade Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in order to carry out a pincer operation against the rear of the Axis forces in North Africa. Allied forces invaded French North Africa on November 8, 1942. This joint British-American invasion was known as “Operation Torch”.Shapiro, president of the university organization Qol Aviv. Michel Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa During the Second World War (Detroit: Wayne University State Press, 1989), p.
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When the Vichy regime was established, French General Charles de Gaulle, who bitterly opposed the surrender of France to the Germans, fled to Great Britain, where he set up a French Government-in-exile and rallied around him other Frenchmen who wanted to free France from the tyranny of the Germans and the collaboration of Vichy.
