It is a dark page of history, long remained hidden in the archives of the French army. : the work camps in North Africa, where Jewish soldiers demobilized after the defeat of 1940 were interned.
On October 24, 1870, the Crémieux decree, named after the Minister of Justice at the time, granted French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria, with the idea of linking Algeria a little more to France. But 70 years later, the Crémieux decree was repealed with a stroke of the pen the day after the anti-Jewish laws adopted by the Vichy regime. On October 3, 1940, the 110,000 Jews of Algeria ceased to be French citizens, including the veterans of 1914, those who had survived the battles of Verdun, Chemin des Dames or Dardanelles (Bosphorus).
In 1941,18,500 Jewish children were expelled from public school. A numerus clausus is applied to Jewish pupils and teachers in primary, secondary and university education. Civil servants are dismissed and the professions of doctor, lawyer or the press are forbidden to them. “The extent of the trauma is commensurate with their assimilation” … “for a community which had multiplied the marks of love for the Republic on which all hopes were focused“, writes historian Benjamin Stora in his book The three Jewish exiles from Algeria.
Less known, but just as tragic, the story of the Jewish soldiers hired in 1939, stripped of French nationality by Vichy and locked up in work camps in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
In September 1939, when war was declared, young French people were mobilized in Algeria as well as in mainland France. Among them, several thousand Jews joined their units, but the debacle of May-June 1940 stopped the fighting. The Jewish soldiers then find themselves in the difficult situation of being the soldiers of an army under the orders of Vichy and its anti-Jewish laws. These will be applied with particular zeal in the French departments of Algeria.
In April 1941, Jewish soldiers from North Africa were taken to the internment camps of Bedeau in the Oran region and Teleghma in the Constantine region.
In a letter of February 28, 1941, General Huntziger, Secretary of State for War under Vichy, addressed General Weygand, delegate general of the Vichy government in French Africa : “Reports on the state of mind of the troops in North Africa show that the Jews remaining in the units have a harmful influence and that, by their lack of national sense, they undermine good morale in these units.. (…) I ask you to put an end to this state of affairs (and of) withdraw all Jews from units in North Africa. “
This letter unearthed by journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet in 1997 had been dormant since the end of World War II in the army archives at the Château de Vincennes. These Jewish soldiers assigned to these labor camps constitute only a part of all the Jews interned in North Africa. Historian Robert O. Paxton puts the figure at 14,000 to 15,000 people who were subjected to ill-treatment by the French authorities. The American historian has identified as many as sixteen forced labor camps spread across North Africa.
Extremely hard camps, most often guarded by members of the French Legion of Fighters, a pro-Nazi Vichy militia. These camps bring together Algerian Jewish soldiers of the 1938 and 1939 classes, but also opponents, Communists or Freemasons. They are assigned to earthworks, but most often to “the exhausting and deadly chore of stones “, according to the testimonies of “inmates “ from the Bedeau camp, in the Tlemcen region.
“Despite the freezing climate at night, and torrid during the day, the men are housed in tents in precarious hygienic conditions. They have waste clothes and insufficient food (…) They endure the cold, the hunger, bullying “
Archives of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center
In November 1942, the Americans landed in Algeria and Morocco, but the “Groups of Israelite workers” will not disappear before April 1943. A document of the time denounces the fact that “workers who are suspected of pro-American sentiments are severely punished or beaten”. On their arrival in Algeria, the Anglo-Americans counted 2,000 detainees in these camps.
The soldiers loyal to Vichy fear especially to see these young Jewish soldiers join the Free French of Leclerc, while in Algiers the battle rages between Giraudists and Gaullists. It was not until the final victory of the latter that the work camps were finally closed, between April and July 1943. As for the Crémieux decree, it was reinstated in Algeria on March 18, 1943, when the Vichy people were weakened in North Africa.
Many of these prisoners will immediately enlist to participate in the campaigns from Italy and Provence to Germany, where they will participate in the liberation of the camps.