Excerpt:
On Passover, remembering these three Arab Jewish communities
Libyan Holocaust survivors returning to the country from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945. (Yad Vashem)
...Libya
Another country where Jews have an ancient history, Libya was an Italian colony at the beginning of World War 2. 30,000 Jews lived in the country, and from 1940 they came under anti-Semitic restrictions ordered by the fascist government.
Through the course of the war, the country’s Jews would be used for forced labour, sent to concentration camps in the desert, and deported to European concentration camps. Some Libyan Jews ended up in Bergen-Belsen, although they miraculously managed to survive.
Of the 2,600 Libyan Jews sent to Jado concentration camp, in the desert, 562 died.
After the founding of Israel in 1948, anti-Semitic violence broke out in Libya, leaving at least a dozen dead. Soon after, the majority of Jews fled to Israel.
Of 4,000 Jews left at the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, only 100 remained by the time Moammar Gadaffi took power in 1969. The dictator further tightened legal restrictions on the community, and by 2004 there were reportedly no Jews left in the country.
A recent memoir, Libyan Twilight, by Raphael Luzon, tells the story of the country's Jewish community from the point of view of its author, who left the country after the pogroms of 1967.
Jacob Burns
