Jews in Muslim lands during the Holocaust

• Published date: 21 February 2023
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Part One: British and French Appeasement of Nazi Germany

Part Two: Soviet Russia as ally of Nazi Germany

Part Three: United States Isolationism from Nazi Germany

Part Four: France: Ally of the West to Collaborator with Nazi Germany

Part Five:Nations That Actively Saved Jews During The Holocaust

Part Six: Jews Who Fought To Defeat The Nazis

It is fascinating to think that while the Allies were fighting the Axis in Arab areas of North Africa and the Middle East during the Second World War, the Arabs living there were mostly doing nothing, while God was busy saving the Jews in those Arab lands from the same fate of genocide suffered by Jews in Europe. If anything, many Arabs were more sympathetic to the Axis powers and cooperated with them and hoped that they would defeat the Allies. But Axis ambitions and Arab hopes were dashed and were not to be as the Allies finally triumphed and the vast majority of Jews in Muslim lands were spared the same deadly fate suffered by their Jewish brethren in Europe.

Miraculously, out of almost one million Sephardic Jews, at most a few thousand Jewish Sefardic victims succumbed to Nazi, Vichy, Italian and Arab persecution in North Africa and the Middle East.

The influence that a combination of 1) German Nazi ideology, propaganda, diplomacy, and military intervention 2) anti-Semitic Vichy French control, 3) Italian Fascist influence and military involvement, 4) Arab anti-Western sentiments and 5) growing Islamic fundamentalism, rooted in anti-Semitism in Islam, as exhibited by the Mufti of Jerualem Amin al–Husseini (1897–1974) and others like him, in the era before, during and after the Second World War (1939–1945) created for Jews in Muslim lands a highly dangerous combustible explosion-waiting-to-happen environment. Thank God it never materialized and the Sephardi Jews were saved from the Holocaust!

Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world: "The relationship between Nazi Germany and the leadership of the Arab world encompassed contempt, propaganda, collaboration, and in some instances emulation. Cooperative political and military relationships were founded on shared hostilities toward common enemies, such as the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, along with communism, and Zionism. Another key foundation of this collaboration was the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and their hostility towards the United Kingdom and France, which was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini."

As it turned out, it was in the years after the end of the Second World War and leading up to and following the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 that Arab and Islamic hatred for the Jews in Muslim countries finally exploded with such ferocious force that it led to the violent eviction of almost all Jews from all Arab Muslim countries resulting in the expulsion of nearly one million Sefardic Jews from their ancient ancestral homelands: "The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of around 900,000 Jews from Arab countries and Iran, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s, though with one final exodus from Iran in 1979–80 following the Iranian Revolution. An estimated 650,000 of the departees settled in Israel."

Vichy France, the collaborationist ally of Nazi Germany, inherited control of a number of key French colonies. In North Africa, the Vichy French controlled three countries with huge Jewish populations: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In the Middle East the Vichy French controlled Lebanon and Syria also home to large Jewish populations. Fascist Italy controlled Libya and Nazi Germany invaded North Africa and fought the Allies in the North African campaign from June 1940 to May 1943 in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, all countries with sizable Sefardic Jewish populations.

During the war, Tunisia had about 85,000 Jews, Libya had about 40,000 Jews and Egypt had about 80,000 Jews living in them, all lands that the dreaded Nazi Afrika Korps invaded. Had the British not defeated the Germans at the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt, from July to November 1942, the fate of all the Sefardic Jews, as well as the fate of the approximately 500,000 Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine in Eretz Yisrael, would have been the same as that of the Ashkenazic Jews of Europe, a genocidal Final Solution and a merciless Holocaust.

Since God is the Master of all things and controls the affairs of humankind, the ultimate overall fate of Sefardic Jewry was that it was to be granted life even though they suffered and were under the heel and in the gunsights of Fascism and Nazism, while sadly on the other hand, six million Ashkenazic Jews were not as fortunate and were instead destined to die Al Kiddush HaShem- For the Sanctification of God's Name as Jewish martyrs!

There is no one "rational" rule or explanation for such events. All one can say that it is God's Will, as we say in the High Holiday prayer of Unetanneh Tokef recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: "On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die after a long life and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will...