Lyn Julius
Jews of Algeria

Lyn Julius - Jews of Algeria

- Good evening everybody, and thank you for having me once again on Lockdown University. So my subject tonight is the Jews of Algeria. Now, you’ve been hearing a lot about France this term. What is the link between France and Algeria? Simply that Algeria, the largest country in Africa by area, was a French colony from 1830. It was the jewel in the crown of the French empire, which stretched deep into Africa and into other parts of the world. But Algeria was not just a colony, it was France. So unlike the Protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco, it was an integral part of metropolitan France. It had a large population of white settlers known as Pieds-Noirs, most of whom immigrated in the 19th century from France and Southern Europe. The rest were Arab Muslims and Kabyles, which is the name given to the indigenous Berbers. The Jews were unusual amongst Jews from Arab countries because they had all been naturalised French. This year also marks 60 years since the great exodus of Jews from Algeria. Some 130,000 Jews were forced to flee after a bloody war. Over 95% fled to France in 1962 when Algeria achieved independence. And this is an Algerian kosher butcher shop that we found in Paris, Boucherie Norbert from L'oranaise. Now today, the official number of Jews in Algeria is zero. There are no Jews in Algeria, and there are a few traces left of Jewish life in Algeria that yet there had been a Jewish presence for 2000 years or more. The great synagogues of Algiers and Oran have been turned into mosques, and there is little contact between Algerian Jews and Algeria, although there have been some nostalgeria trips, visits to cemeteries and rabbi’s tombs. President Macron has tried to reboot the relationship between Algeria and France this year for the 60th anniversary of Algerian Independence.

But the only thing to remind Algerians of their Jews is this, the cachir sausage. The fact that Jews on mass were given the nationality of the colonialists while the Algerian Arabs were not, has led people to identify Jews as settler colonialists. And this is where the trope comes from. And if Jews are tarred with the colonialist brush, some people make parallels between France’s colonial war in Algeria and Israel’s war with the Arabs. And it is claimed that Algeria’s Jews cast their lot with France in a supposed betrayal of Algeria’s Arabs and the colonised Arabs of Palestine so they think will triumph just a surely as they did in Algeria. But I digress. Far from being colonial, Jewish roots go back at least 2000 years. A thousand years before Islam, Jewish traders arrived in North Africa with the Phoenicians and the first Jewish slaves and expellees from Judea settled among the Berbers soon after the destruction of the second temple and traces of Judean presence as indicated by this coin bearing ancient Hebrew writing can even be older. Here is a detail on the right hand side of a mosaic floor from the Roman synagogue of Hammam Lif in present day to Tunisia. Of course, there were no hard and fast borders in those days, and Jews moved between Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria. But the main centres of Algerian Jewish life were really on or near the coast, notably Algiers, Clemson and Constantine. Some Berber tribes were said to have converted to Judaism, but this is actually disputed. The most famous Jewish Berber of all, the Warrior Queen Kahina, fought and lost to the Arab Muslim invaders in the seventh century.

They say that her name derived from Cohen, but this again is disputed. At first, the community was dependent on Babylonian and Palestinian scholarship, and later on, rabbinic academies were established in the town of Clemson until the Almohad, who were fanatical Muslims, ushered in a dark period of persecution in the 12th century, and they forcibly converted a lot of non-Muslims. So after 1492, the settled indigenous Jews who managed to survive Islamization by the Almohads were known as the Toshavim. And they were joined in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Megorashim Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition. And these maintained contact with the outside world and invigorated intellectual life in Algeria. There was a merchant elite from Livorno known as the Grana or the Gorni or also the Francos because they had consular protection from the French and they settled in Algeria in the 16th and 17th centuries as they did in Tunisia and Morocco. So Rabbi Ephraim Alnaqua or Alnucawi known as the Rab, was said to have established the city of Clemson, “The pearl of the Maghreb” or the Jerusalem of the West. He fled to in 1391, and legend has it that he came riding on a lion with an enormous serpent on the lion’s halter. It is said that he cured the Sultan’s daughter of her illness, and as a reward, the sultan allowed him to bring in 500 Jewish families.

And the rabbi’s tomb was an enormously popular shrine and attracted 10,000 pilgrims, especially at Lag Ba'Omer. Another famous rabbi was the Rivash, Isaac ben Sheshet and there was also Rabbi Simeon Duran. The latter helped to impose “Maimonides Mishneh Torah Codification,” and there were many others. Now, Algeria was a base for the Berbery pirates, and in the 16th century, Spain captured cities on the North African coast. The French made several failed attempts to conquer the coast too, but the country came under Ottoman rule from 1516 onwards. So under Ottoman rule by the Beys and the Deys, that’s the local governors and the military commanders, most Jews lived in abject misery as dhimmis, inferior subjects under Islam with few rights. One 19th century traveller, Signor Pananti wrote, “There is no species of outrage or vexation to which the Jews are not exposed. The indolent moor with a pipe in his mouth and his legs crossed, calls any Jew who is passing and makes him perform the officers of a servant. Even fountains were happier, at least they were allowed to murmur.” And eyewitness reports at the time echo Signor Pananti’s observations. And the early 19th century was a particularly bad time for the Jews, and they were forced to supply the rulers with women and drink among other things. Now, a famine broke out in 1805, and the Jews were held responsible.

Even rich merchants from Livorno could not escape the wrath of the mob. And the meat Livornese meat merchant Busnach was shot, the Jewish Quarter of Algiers pillaged and 14 Jews killed. In 1815, the chief rabbi of Algiers was decapitated in another riot. Jews were caught up in inter-Arab rivalries and were a useful scapegoat. Now ironically, the Jews who at the time were 20% of the population were to be a pretext for the French to invade Algeria in 1830. The Dey of Algeria had a meeting with the French consul to demand that an outstanding debt be paid to two merchants, two Jewish merchants, Busnach and Bakri, who supplied wheat to Napoleon’s army. The French offered to pay the debt back, but with reservations. Apparently it was the reservations which caused the Dey to fly into a rage and strike the consul with a fly swatter, which you see here on the picture. France established three in Northern Algeria, and they became part of metropolitan France in 1830. What was the reaction of the Jews? Well, the Jews greeted the French as saviours and liberators. They knelt and kissed the hands of the French soldiers. In 1541, and again in 1775, the Jews had sided with the Muslims against Spain. In fact, the victory of the Muslims against the Spanish has been commemorated as the Algiers Purim because a storm broke out and destroyed 150 ships of the Spanish Armada, which ran aground on the small rocks in Algiers Harbour.

So this is definitely a cause for celebration for the Jews, but this time it was different. This was the France of the rights of man, of liberty, equality and fraternity. France would liberate the Jews from the oppressive dhimmi status. Their joy knew no bounds, although the Jews would suffer massacres for their loyalty to the French. Now, I cannot stress enough how groundbreaking this liberation would be because it would not be until 1856 that the dhimmi rules would be abrogated elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. And up until then, Jews could really only be assured of any rights if they were under the protection of foreign government, for instance, the French Consul. Or they were exempt under the so-called capitulations, which was a sort of regime for giving privileges to merchants or people who’d given the sultan special concessions. But it would take a couple of decades for the French to subdue local resistance. And Emir Abdelkader led the tribal rebellion against France in the west of Algeria. And not all Jews supported the French. Some also contributed to Abdel-kader’s war effort.

Now, Abdelkader was a fascinating character. After 17 years of resistance, he was given safe passage out of Algeria, and he was eventually exiled to Syria where he showed a sort of humanitarian side to himself. He was not just a belligerent and a fighter, he was also a gentleman. And during the war that broke out in Syria in 1860, he actually sheltered Christians in Damascus. And here’s another interesting factoid. Abdel-kader’s friend, Rabbi Abel was exiled from Algeria with him. And ironically, became French consul in the Galilee, and this enabled him to buy up lands for Jewish settlement in . And even more interesting, Abdel-kader’s great grandson, helped the Palmach in 1948, and he married an Israeli Jewess and is buried in a kibbutz. But let’s return to Algeria. This is actually a picture that depicts the Jews who actually left Algeria in 1941. They did not stay under French rule, and they sailed for Israel. And among them was one Abraham Chelouche who arrived in Haifa in 1840 after a stormy voyage in which 18 people died. And in fact, he lost two of his sons. And Abraham Chelouche settled in Jaffa, and his family were amongst the founders of Tel Aviv.

And actually if you are a visitor to Israel, you will recognise Chelouche Street in Neve Tzedek and the Chelouche Synagogue. And it’s still quite a prominent family. But let us return to Algeria. The act of capitulation of July, 1830, brought in by the French stipulated that, “The liberty of all inhabitants, of all religions and classes would not be violated and their women would be respected. The traditional relationship between Muslims and Jews would be ended. A man would no longer be defined by religion. Jews were members of the Jewish nation, and from now on they would submit to the laws of France and the state would determine marriage and education. Their community would no longer be autonomous, but be integrated into France. Rabbis would be nominated by the French state. An Algerian consistory or religious administration modelled on the French Consistory was set up. In other words, Algerian Jewry, would become a branch of French Jewry. The Jews would benefit from modern schooling following the French curriculum.

French would replace Arabic and European dress would replace traditional modes of dress.” As you can see in this family photo, already the people in the photo are wearing European dress, except for the gentleman in the centre, he still wears his traditional costume and his turban. So this triggered a process of Frenchification in Algeria that went beyond that of the Jews into Tunisia, or in the Moroccan protectorates. The Jews of Algeria would end up identifying as , that’s Frenchmen of the Jewish faith. But until the Jews were given citizenship, the Jews found themselves in a kind of limbo. “Were they natives or French? Should civil divorce take precedence over religious divorce? Which inheritance laws should apply?” For about 40 years, there was a great deal of confusion. The rabbis were in despair. They had been stripped of their power to determine each Jew’s personal status. The only thing left for them to control it seemed were the slaughter houses. Rabbis worried about pernicious secularisation that French citizenship would bring. They thought it would lead to acculturation and assimilation. Rabbi Abraham Hasan was horrified. He said, “We are having shoved down our throats and there is almost nothing left of Judaism.” From an early stage, Jews requested full French citizenship, but it was difficult to obtain. Enter a passionate supporter of citizenship, Adolphe Crémieux.

A son of the enlightenment, Isaac Jacob-Adolphe Crémieux was a French lawyer and politician with impeccable liberal and universalist values. He was born in Nîmes in Provence. He accompanied Sir Moses Montefiore to plead for the lives of the Jews jailed as a result of the 1840 Damascus affair. Apparently Montefiore and Cremieux loathed each other. He served as Minister of Justice. He was a parliamentarian and a senator. He’s credited with ending slavery in the French Antilles and is sometimes referred to as the French Abraham Lincoln. And he served as president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which of course was the groundbreaking network of schools set up on the French model, and which would educate Jews in the Muslim world and equip them for modernity. He took a keen interest in Algeria and was a frequent visitor there, and he was to lend his name to the Décret Crémieux, which some people allied as the Du Crémieux the law passed in 1870, that gave French citizenship to the Jews. Technically, the Jews didn’t give their consent. It was imposed on the 35,000 Jews. There were practical considerations. Crémieux and you needed their votes. There is a myth that only Jews were offered French citizenship, in fact a Senatus-consulte or resolution of 1865, also offered Muslims French citizenship.

The condition was that they no longer abided by Muslim personal status. For instance, Muslims would have to abandon polygamy and adopt French civil divorce. And this was a bridge too far. Jews became French citizens while the native Muslims did not. The native Muslims did not. The Crémieux Decree turned out to be a poisoned chalice. It distanced Jews from Muslims and brought them closer to France. On the one hand, the Jews were able to enter public life and take up their civic responsibilities. On the other hand, the Décret Crémieux, created a huge amount of bad blood with the Muslims. And some historians accused the Jews of betraying their Muslim brothers with whom they shared culture, custom and language. The Jews and Muslims had never been brothers on an equal legal footing, Jews had been inferior dhimmis. Muslims resented the Jews’ newfound status and called them arrogant. Barely a year after the Crémieux Decree was passed, the Kabyles, the Algerian Berbers, rose up in rebellion. They attacked cities and burnt farms and they massacred 31 colonialists.

The Crémieux Decree was not the trigger for this strong Muslim reaction, but it contributed to it. Their leader, Mokrani said, “I am willing to put myself under a sabre even if it chopped off my head. But under a Jew, never, never.” The Crémieux Decree also ignited virulent opposition from the 800,000 Pieds-Noirs or white settlers. They reckoned that the Native Jews did not deserve to be on an equal footing with them. And so the Jews found themselves between a rock and a hard place. In 1897, antisemitic riots broke out in three cities demanding the abrogation of the décret Crémieux, synagogues were ransacked. The Dreyfus affair in 1894 led to violent reactions both from the Muslims and the Pieds-Noirs. Max Régis, the son of an Italian immigrant who became mayor of Algiers at 25, stood on an anti-Semitic ticket. The mayor of Oran, declared “To vote for me is to vote against the Jews.” “Antisemitism is the local version of socialism,” it was said. As mayor of Algiers, Max Régis led the anti-Jewish movement in the city spreading horrible incitement against the Jews. Many of the Pieds-Noirs had been immigrants from Spain, and they brought with them their traditional Catholic antisemitism. “The Jews are upstarts, they are blood suckers. They are ruining us. They are liars,” they claimed. As we know, the anti-Semite Édouard Drumont was founder of the “La Libre Parole” newspaper and the author of the pamphlet, “La France Juive” alleging a Jewish conspiracy to control France. And he spearheaded the campaign against Dreyfus. In 1898, Drumont becomes the MP for Algiers.

And here he is on the right hand side. He’s the bareheaded beard of man in the centre. And here he is arriving in the Port of Algiers. Now riots broke out throughout France and spilled over to Algeria on Saturday, January the 22nd, 1898. Hatred whipped up by Édouard Drumont led to attacks against the Jews. And some argue that France imported antisemitism from Algeria and not the other way around. Thankfully, more liberal influences gained the upper hand when Dreyfus was acquitted and the economic crisis came to an end. In 1905, church and state were formally separated. The Frenchification process continue at breakneck speed. As French citizens, Jews served in World War I and 2,850 Jews laid down their lives for the motherland and many others distinguished themselves fighting for France. But the French army was rife with antisemitism and a committee to protect Jewish rights was set up under the chairmanship of Now this was a seminal event in the 20th century for the Jews of Algeria, the Constantine Riot of 1934. The Great Depression in the US led to an economic crisis in Algeria in the 1930s. The Constantine Massacre of 1934, which claimed the lives of 25 Jews was started by disaffected Muslims. On Friday, August the third, 1934, a Jewish man named Eliahou Khalifa returned home. To access his front door, he had to cross a narrow Paris passageway.

Two windows overlooked the ablutions room of the Sidi Lakhdar Mosque. Khalifa asked for them to be closed to avoid prying into the ablutions room from the outside. The Arabs refused. According to the mosque muezzin, Khalifa cursed the religion of Mohamed. The rumour grew that a drunken Jew had broken into the mosque and cursed praying Muslims. Others even alleged that this Jew urinated in front of them. Before long hundreds of Arabs were shouting and reaching for their clubs. The Jews barricaded themselves in . That evening, six Jewish owned jewellery stores were looted. The fact that only Jewish jewellery stores were attacked suggests that the attacks were premeditated. The forces of law and order took two days to arrive. This is unfortunately a pattern familiar to Jewish communities under colonial rule, the police only arrive when it is too late. Oddly, the Governor General was not in Algiers at the time of the anti-Jewish riots, while the central Commissioner had left Constantine the day before, this power vacuum must have added fuel to the fire. The toll was heavy, 25 dead, including six women and four babies, and several dozen injured. The massacre led to the establishment of a second committee, to preserve Jewish rights. Now, Jews had significant political power because the Muslims could not vote. But those rights were never secure.

In Sidi Bel Abbès, the mayor wanted to fix the elections by depriving the Jews of the vote. The Jews went to the Court of Appeal to have their voting rights reinstated. This occurred in 1939, but worse was to come when the Vichy regime was installed in 1940, and the Algerian Jews were stripped of their French citizenship. In June of 1940, France fell to the Nazis, the pro-Nazi Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain, the avuncular World War I hero, was installed in French North Africa. The Pieds-Noirs greeted Pétain with even more enthusiasm than he had attracted in France. Before long, the far right press was clamouring for the longstanding demand of anti-Semites to be realised, the abolition of the Crémieux Decree. On the 11th of September, 1940, the extreme rights staged a mini against Jewish shops. The Vichy government adopted a set of discriminatory laws to be applied in Algeria and in Morocco and Tunisia, after ratification by the Bey of Tunis and the Sultan of Morocco. The Statut des Juifs, was applied on October the fourth, 1940, even though the Germans had not even asked for it. This was a strictly French initiative. And in many cases, the anti-Jewish measures went beyond what was applied in France itself. Jews were defined as persons with two or three Jewish grandparents. So on October the seventh, 17 years after their full integration into the nation, Vichy abrogated the Crémieux Decree, reducing the French Jewish citizens of Algeria to the rank of subjects except in matters of property and personal status. And here you see the headline in the newspaper “Le Pionier,” “At last, we’ve abrogated it or it’s been abrogated.”

Rare exceptions were granted to decorated, wounded or maimed veterans. But as you can see from the list on the right, almost all those veterans who applied to retain their French citizenship were rejected. Says, . Under the The Statut des Juifs, French officials were dismissed from public service in Algeria, in Morocco, and in Tunisia. Jews could not work in the liberal professions. More categories were added. Cinema and cafe owners, security guards, quotas were introduced in medicine or law where Jews were heavily represented. All these measures went beyond what was applied in France itself. Jewish children were expelled from state primary schools and high schools and students subject to a rigorous quota to the satisfaction of student associations in Algiers. The philosopher Jacques Derrida said he was scarred for life by his expulsion from primary school. 465 Jewish teachers sacked from the public sector were drafted into Jewish schools, and there was a quota in universities. The application of these measures was particularly stringent in Algeria compared to Morocco and Tunisia. The second Statut des Juifs was produced by Xavier Vallat, Commissioner for Jewish questions on June the second, 1941 in mainland France. He ordered an inventory of Jewish assets to be made in order to implement economic Aryanization.

That is the dispossession of the Jews. The decree of November the 21st, 1941, applied in Algeria aimed to eliminate all Jewish influence in the national economy. Provisional administrators were appointed by the Governor General for businesses owned by Jews. To their credit, Muslims as a whole refrained from acquiring Jewish businesses. Meanwhile, the North African press lashed out against the Jews accusing them of black market profiteering. After the Allies won the Battle of El Alamein in October, 1942, they planned Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. And here we come to one of the more extraordinary episodes in the history of World War II. It’s the story of the Algiers resistance. The group numbered 377 young men, 315 of them were Jews. They gathered in a gym and trained in martial arts with Géo Gras, a former French military boxing champion. Unbeknown to Géo Gras, weapons were hidden beneath the floorboards of the room. On the night of November the eighth, 1942, José Aboulker and his Géo Gras friends took just 15 minutes to take the police headquarters in Algiers, the governor’s residence, the Army HQ, and the main radio station. They had antiquated arms and no proper uniforms. But for 18 hours, the group spread misinformation and gave fake orders over the radio. They impersonated the Vichy Admiral Darlan at one point, allowing an American force of some 2000 soldiers to take Algiers with barely a shot being fired. Compared to other cases of Jewish heroism during World War II, the story of Géo Gras is rarely mentioned in the Israeli history lessons or in memorial ceremonies.

The Warsaw ghetto fighters, for example, were tremendously brave, but their efforts had no significant effect on the outcome of World War II. Yet the Algerian resistance heroes have been forgotten. It took a whole year for the Crémieux Decree to be reinstated, and not only that, but the Géo Gras resistance fighters were interned. This is because the Americans kept the Vichy officials, these anti-Semitic officials in place. It was only after protests by US leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Édouard de Rothschild, and a personal intervention by President Roosevelt himself that the Crémieux Decree was reinstated. Now, this was in October, 1943. A new constitution of 1947 was imposed by General , And this declared equality between citizens, but it was opposed predictably by the Pieds-Noirs. So once World War II was over, the Algerian nationalists led by Ferhat Abbas stepped up their campaign to win independence from France. As the FLN, the independence fighters embarked on an evermore brutal war of decolonization after 1954, while the Pieds-Noirs represented by the OAS, engaged in equally brutal counter terror, the Jewish community was careful to maintain an official position of neutrality. “We are loyalists to France and we are loyal to Muslims,” Said the philosopher Raymond Bénichou. In 1956, the Soummam Letter was drafted by a Congress of FLM nationalists, and they tried to push the Jews into the Algerian Nationalist camp.

“Let us hope that the Algerian Jews will follow those who have responded to the generous patrie, giving their friendship to the Revolution and proudly proclaiming their Algerian nationality.” Jacques Lazarus, who was the spokesman of the World Jewish Congress in Algeria, and a great advocate for the Algerian Jews replied, “The Jews of Algeria are grateful to France for its liberation of them from dhimmitude. We have chosen France.” Now, there was a tradition of Jews supporting Muslim emancipation and pressing for French citizenship to be extended to Muslims. Some Jews supported the FLN Independence Fighters. A minority of anti-French Jewish communists earned the title . The Levy family was split. One of William Levy’s sons was murdered by the FLN. He himself was murdered by the OAS. His niece had both legs blown up in a notorious nightclub bombing of the 9th of June, 1957. Another son died later in Israel when his tractor drove over a mine. One witness to the Algerian war was . He was a child at the time and he had this to report. “As far as I’m concerned, the events did not affect our relations with the young Muslims of our entourage, our classmates or neighbours. We did sometimes have fights, but we did not talk politics. Each tacitly accepted that the Muslims supported independence and vice versa, that non-Muslims were for French Algeria. However, I should point out one exception, our neighbour opposite was a virulent Nazi Islamist, openly anti-Jewish as was his family. Because of individuals like him, we fled.

They already incarnated Muslim hegemonic fanaticism. My parents were familiar with it and spoke about it to us too. I must stress this fact because most public accounts by Jews minimise the anti-Semitism of some Muslims while emphasising the anti-Semitism of the Pieds-Noirs. I know that the previous generation had suffered from Pieds-Noirs anti-Semitism, but in my generation, this was not the case. On the contrary, we were most fearful of Muslim antisemitism.” The Jews could sit on the fence no longer when two events forced them decisively into the French camp. The first was the burning of the Great Synagogue in Algiers. In December, 1960, Arabs went on the rampage ripping memorials plaques from the walls and torching books and Torah scrolls. And you can see the graffiti on the right hand side there. It says “Vive Abbas,” that’s Ferhat Abbas who’s the nationalist leader. The second event was the murder in 1961 when he was out shopping in the market of the famous Jewish musician, Sheikh Raymond Leyris known as Sheikh Raymond. And this is his tomb in Constantine. He was one of the great figures of Andalusian music, a gifted oud player, blessed with an astonishing voice and a symbol of a shared Arab Jewish culture. And he was also father-in-law of the singer Enrico Macias, who you see here on the left. After his murder, 20,000 Jews fled Constantine. So like the Pieds-Noirs, the Jews were faced with a stark choice suitcase or coffin. They scrambled to reach seaports and airports. And by the time Algeria had declared independence on the 3rd of July, 1962, all but a few thousand Jews had left for France.

Now down in the Sahara Desert was a region known as the Mʾzab. And this was actually never under French control. And Jews lived in that area. For instance, in the town of Ghardaia, the Jews there did not have French nationality and were still in a state of fossilised dhimmitude. Then in 1962, the Mozabite Jews scrambled to get French nationality, but they didn’t always manage to get it and many actually went to Israel. But the rest of the Jews of Algeria, along with 800,000 Pieds-Noirs, were repatriated to France. The Watchword was now “Muslim Algeria,” not “Algeria, for the Algerians.” And the constitution of the new independent Algeria that stipulated that, “No non-Muslim, even those who had fought for the FLN, could be awarded Algerian nationality unless they had a Muslim father or grandfather.” So there was no place for Jews in the new Algeria, as sadly, there is no place for Jews in most countries in the Arab world. Now, there is a bizarre post script to this story. In January, 1963, there was a sort of trial of the Algerian Jewish community at the Jerusalem artists house where Moshe Sharett, who was then chairman of the Jewish Agency, accused Algerian Jewry of flawed Zionists sentiment. He was angered by the fact that out of a 130,000 Algerian Jews, only 15,000 had immigrated to Israel while the others preferred to immigrate to France. “That choice reflects their estrangement from Judaism and disregard for the state of Israel,” he said. Now Moshe Sharett need not have worried because Aliyah to Israel turned out to have been delayed by one generation and around 50,000 French Jews, most of them are Algerian origin, have immigrated to Israel between 2003 and 2019. Many of them in response to the rise of antisemitism in France. So I will stop there and very happy to answer questions if you have any.

Q&A and Comments:

So Robert Turner says, “Marc Bensimon.” His family, I showed you with the man in the turban in the middle and all the people wearing European dress around him. So Marc Bensimon was a good friend of mine. He was born in Constantine, Algeria. His father served in World War II in the French Army. Mark served in the US Air Force and he passed away last year. He lived his last years in Corsica.

Q: “Where is the Bensimon family shown in the photo? From which city?”

A: I would imagine they’re from Constantine actually, Robert.

Q: “Did Churchill’s destruction of the French fleet in Oran, have an impact on the Jewish community?”

A: I don’t think it did. I know the one thing that really made a difference was the abrogation of the Décret Crémieux and all the laws that came in under the Statut des Juifs, all the sort of discriminatory laws. And of course they were happy to have the Allies invade North Africa in late 1942. But in fact, their status did not change as I indicated, until a year later. Mr. Chelouche built two identical houses for his sons at Street. But yes, that’s right. That’s right.

Sorry, I’m just having a bit of trouble here with the scrolling down. Here we go. Yes, he did.

“At Street, which is at the end of a road called Moshe Lilienblum near the Eden Cinema in Tel Aviv. They’re beautiful buildings. I live next door.” That’s Mimi. Thank you for that.

Q: “Have the Algerian insurgents been recognised now?”

A: Well, I still don’t think that people know about them. There was a film made a few years ago called “Night of Fools,” which tried to showcase the story of the Algerian resistance. And I don’t know if that had much effect, but certainly I think more people do know about it.

Thank you, Abigail. Just see what else we’ve got here. Yeah. Gideon. Yes. Oh. That’s nice. My son is listening.

“I often pray at Chelouche Synagogue in Neve Tzedek. I think it was founded in 1865. Thanks for the talk.” It’s a pleasure.

“Thank you for the very interesting lecture.” Thank you very much Sarah.

Q: And Maron says, “What group exactly was included in the Pieds-Noirs?”

A: These were the white settlers who made up about a fifth of the population of Algeria. They were a motley collection. They were basically immigrants from France and they were also from Southern Europe. So you had Spanish immigrants, you had Italian immigrants. The famous writer Albert Camus was one such white settler. I think he was of Spanish origin. He was from Oran, but he was not an anti-Semite. Quite the contrary.

So I think that might be the end of the questions. Thanks to everyone who joined me tonight.