Tripoli pogrom
The Tripoli pogrom in 1945 was a bloody riot by Muslims against the Jewish minority in Libya .
From November 5, 1945 to November 7, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in an anti-Jewish pogrom in the Libyan capital Tripoli . Coupled with previous religiously motivated persecution and the repression of Jews by the pro-Italian government during World War II , the Tripoli riots marked a turning point in the history of the Jews in Libya . In the decades that followed, most of the Jews were expelled and the Jewish community ceased to exist as most of them fled to Italy or Israel .
background
The anti-Semitism was in Libya when that time Italian Libya a colony until the mid-20th century hardly existent. In the late 1930s, the Italian fascist regime began to pass anti-Jewish laws. In Libya ruled at this time the Associazione Musulmana del Littorio ( Italian for Muslim Association of the Lictor ), the Libyan branch of the Italian fascists . As a result of these laws, Jews were fired from government positions, some were suspended from state schools, and their identity cards were marked with the words "Jewish Race." Despite this repression, in 1941 about 25% of the population of Tripoli was Jewish and 44 synagogues remained in the city. In 1942, German troops fighting the Allies in North Africa occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi . With the participation of the local Muslim population, they looted shops and deported more than 2,000 Jews across the desert. More than a fifth of this group of Jews died as a result of being deported to concentration camps alone .
Despite the liberation from fascist Italy and from Nazi-German influence, the Jews suffered countless attacks from the local population. Arab nationalists effectively took up the propaganda efforts of the National Socialist German Workers Party , and on November 2, 1945, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration , a widespread wave of anti-Jewish uprisings began in the cities of Aleppo ( Syria ), Cairo ( Egypt ) and, most heavily, in Tripoli.
Course of the pogrom
Even after the liberation of North Africa by the Allied troops, religiously based anti-Semitism continued in Libya. There was ultimately bloody violence. From November 5 to November 7, 1945, more than 140 Jews, including 36 children, were killed in Tripoli and several hundred others injured in a pogrom . The insurgents looted almost all of the city's synagogues and completely destroyed five of them, along with hundreds of houses, apartments and shops. Over 4,000 Jews were made homeless and 2,400 more were impoverished. Five synagogues in Tripoli and four in the other provincial capitals were destroyed, and over 1,000 Jewish residences and business premises were looted in Tripoli alone.
The British , American and French troops, who controlled Tripoli, waiting days was recovered thereon to public order, the powers were simultaneously engaged in the Jews during the Farhud - the massacre of the Jewish population of Baghdad in Iraq to protect. As in the Iraqi case, the Tripoli massacre started a chain of events that demoralized the people and, in a relatively short period of time, led to the displacement and disintegration of the Libyan Jewish community. The events caused the beginning of the Libyan-Jewish exodus . Thus, the Jews began to leave Libya three years before the establishment of the State of Israel.
aftermath
During the next decade and a half, Jews in Libya faced various restrictions, including laws regulating their permission to travel and relocate (especially outside the country), their legal status, their identity cards, and their property relations. The Jews were discriminated against and oppressed by law. Even more violence broke out after the Six Day War , which resulted in the deaths of 18 Jews and many more injured. The remaining Jewish community in Libya, which still comprised about 7,000 people, was then almost completely expelled and evacuated to Italy, whereby they had to give up their property and houses. The allegedly last Jewish woman in Libya, an elderly lady, was finally allowed to leave the country after several attempts by her adult son and to emigrate to Italy in 2003.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ CPA: Pogrom of Tripoli 1945
- ↑ a b Selent , pp. 20-21.
- ^ Shields, Jacqueline. Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries in the Virtual Library.
- ^ Stillman (2003, 145).
- ↑ Why Jews fled Arab Countries