Ceremony in memory of the round-up of the Jews of Tunisia
On Sunday 10 December, the 81st anniversary of the round-up of the Jews of Tunis by the Nazis was commemorated in the crypt of the Mémorial de la Shoah.
This ceremony, held every year in Paris since 1997 at the initiative of our Society, recalls that terrible day of 9 December 1942 when the SS, under the command of SS Colonel Walter Rauff, the inventor of the mobile gas vans, rounded up Jews in the streets of Tunis. This round-up was the culmination of the abuses characteristic of the Third Reich: internment, forced labour, ill-treatment, murders, ransoms, rapes, deportation.
The Axis forces occupied Tunisia from November 1942 to May 1943. The liberation of the country by the victory of the Allied forces prevented the Nazis from carrying out their plan to destroy all the Jews of Tunisia, as had been done in Europe.
This ceremony was attended by several religious, civil and military dignitaries. At this difficult time of war in the Middle East and of a wave of antisemitism, Claude Nataf, President of the SHJT, stressed the importance of remembrance and of the vigilance that is essential for the Jewish community of France. Among the dignitaries present were the Chief Rabbi of Paris Michel Gugenheim; Mrs Jeanne d'Hauteserre, Mayor of the 8th arrondissement of Paris; Meyer Habib, Member of Parliament, originally from Tunisia; Joël Mergui, President of the Consistoire; Serge Moati, son of a deportee from Tunisia; and many elected representatives of Paris, Levallois-Perret, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Sarcelles.
Below you will find the complete audio recording of this event in mp3 format (credits: Morris Azan)
SHJT speaker
Claude Nataf
Founding President
Biography
Top of his class at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (1967), postgraduate diploma (DEA) in twentieth-century history from the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, vice-president of the Commission française des archives juives, founding president of the Society for the History of the Jews of Tunisia, departmental delegate of the French national education system
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Enregistrement audio
Ceremony in memory of the round-up of the Jews of Tunisia
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In the same series
9 December ceremony
Commemorative ceremony in memory of the victims at the Mémorial de la Shoah – 10 December 2023
9 December ceremony
Round table – The defeat of the Axis forces in Tunisia and the liberation: the consequences for the Jews of Tunisia – Sunday 10 December 2023
9 December ceremony