"While the head of the SS vociferates, I mentally take stock of the situation. We are very small before a colossal force which is unleashed. I look to my right at the pitiful group of gloomy and silent prisoners. I can make out the beard of the celebrant, I see a child who shivers with fear."
On December 9, 1942, Paul Guez, head of the Jewish community in Tunis, turned out to be quite powerless.
While the German occupier conducts a roundup in the Tunisian capital, it cannot put up any resistance.
Nearly 5,000 Jews are sent to forced labor in several camps.
This date marks a turning point.
Until then, the Jews of Tunisia, about 90,000 people, had not suffered such persecution.
Since the establishment of the Vichy regime, however, they were the object of anti-Semitic measures, according to the statute of the Jews promulgated in France in October 1940. "In this statute, there is article 9 which stipulates that it is applicable in the countries of the protectorate", explains the historian Claude Nataf, president of the Society for the History of the Jews of Tunisia (SHJT).
"But for a text to be applicable in Tunisia, it must have the seal of the bey (the Tunisian sovereign, editor's note)", he specifies.
The application of the statute of the Jews
At the time, Ahmed II Bey ruled the country.
"It is about an old man who will die two years later. He is more concerned about his end and what he will bequeath to his children. He does not want to come into conflict with the Resident General of France, especially for a question which concerns the Jews", specifies Claude Nataf.
The statute was therefore introduced on November 30, 1940 and excluded Jews from the public service and professions relating to the press, radio, theater and cinema.
However, it turns out to be "more moderate" than in mainland France, according to the historian, since the ascendants and descendants of dead for France and war widows benefit, for example, from derogations.
A second statute which reinforced professional exclusions was promulgated in June 1941.
When the bey died in June 1942, his cousin Moncef succeeded him.
The latter publicly expresses his condemnation of official anti-Semitism by declaring: "The Jews, like the Muslims, are my children", but, like his predecessor, he signs decrees enacting racial measures, in particular "to eliminate Jewish influence in the Tunisian economy".
Moncef Bey, Bey of Tunis at the time of the roundup.
Private collection / Wikimedia Commons
German occupation
But the situation worsened, especially with the German occupation in November 1942, following the Anglo-American landing in Algeria and Morocco.
SS Colonel Walter Rauff, inventor of the mobile gas chambers used in Eastern Europe, then led the anti-Jewish action.
"At first he had the idea of launching a pogrom to liquidate the Jews with the help of the Muslim population because he did not have enough men, but the leaders of the Muslim community were informed of this and extinguished the 'fire", describes Claude Nataf.
The Nazi officer then decides to act on his own.
On December 8, 1942, he summoned leaders of the Jewish community and demanded the requisition of 3,000 workers equipped with shovels and pickaxes for the next day.
Only a hundred men respond to this call.
"Rauff then launched a roundup which took place in front of the great synagogue, which the SS desecrated. They arrested all passers-by. A second roundup took place near the school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, while a hundred personalities Jewish women are also locked up in the military prison of Tunis to serve as hostages and to be shot in the event of disobedience", says the historian.
A column of Jews in Tunis, 1942. Bundesarchiv / Wikimedia Commons
In the weeks that followed, 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor in 32 camps scattered around the country.
They then suffered ill-treatment, as Charles Zeitoun, sent to the El-Aouina camp, near Tunis, told us: "The Germans who surrounded us were violent and beat us with whips and sticks to speed up the pace of work. The work was hard because most of the Jews had not done sports and especially were not used to manual work."
Forty of them died in the camps.
The Jews of Tunisia also suffered deportation, but only one convoy left the country in April 1943 with around forty people.
"They could not convoy the deportees to Auschwitz by train. They had to use either the sea route, but it was impossible, or the air route. As the historian Serge Klarsfeld said, the Jews of Tunisia were therefore the only Jews in the world to be deported by plane", underlines Claude Nataf.
A long silence
After six months, the German occupation ended with the arrival of the Allies in May 1943. This put a brake on the application of the "final solution" in Tunisia.
The community then begins to tell the story of what it has suffered, but very quickly these facts are passed over in silence, as the president of the Jewish History Society of Tunisia, himself the son of a former forced laborer: "When they discovered in 1945 what had happened in Europe, they considered that they had suffered less and they kept silent."
Parade of British troops on May 20, 1943 in Tunis.
Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia Commons
Today, the Tunisian Jewish community numbers no more than a thousand people.
Each year, the SHJT highlights the Tunis roundup by organizing conferences and ceremonies.
For the 80th anniversary, a gathering is organized on December 11 at the Shoah Memorial in memory of the victims.
"The History Society has set itself the task of making known what happened. Our fathers had the modesty not to speak, it was the children and grandchildren who took up the torch", insists Claude Nataf.
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