Labor and Internment Camps in North Africa

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

During World War II, Jews in North Africa were held in labor and internment camps run by Vichy France, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. This entry from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia describes the camps across the region.

Libya

Giado and other camps

Libya, then an Italian colony, was a major battleground of the war. In February 1942, Mussolini ordered the Jews of Cyrenaica, in eastern Libya, removed from the war zone, claiming they might help the British. About 2,600 were deported, most of them to Giado, a former military post about 150 miles south of Tripoli where conditions were especially harsh. Others were sent to camps at Buqbuq and Sidi Azaz, or to camps in Tunisia, and prisoners in all of them were forced to work.

Vichy North Africa

Saharan labor camps

After France fell in 1940, the Vichy regime held Jewish refugees, political prisoners, and former Jewish volunteers of the Foreign Legion in labor camps across Algeria and Morocco, where many died from disease, heat, and harsh treatment. In Algeria alone, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Jews were held.

Tunisia

Under German occupation

When Germany occupied Tunisia from November 1942 to May 1943, about 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men were conscripted for forced labor in some forty camps. Even after the Allied landings in November 1942, some camps in North Africa took months or years to close.

Read the full entry at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum →

This summary was written by JIMENA and is based on “Labor and Internment Camps in North Africa” from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia. The original entry belongs to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.