[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] "Murder, Rape and Looting ... Like a Well-organised Contagion": The Libyan Pogroms of 1945 recalled (Daphne Anson)

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In view of some current publicity about the Farhud of 1941 and the latter’s ripple-like repercussions for the Jews of the Arab world, I’ve decided to focus in this week’s column on the pogroms that occurred in Libya in November 1945.

Born in northern England, the son of Lithuanian-born rabbi and scholar M. H. (Moshe Zvi) Segal, who made aliya in 1926 and became a renowned professor at the Hebrew University – Judah Benzion (Ben) Segal (1912-2003) would himself become a distinguished academic.

His knowledge of Arabic ensured that at the outbreak of the war young Segal, with the rank of lieutenant, was appointed to British Intelligence in North Africa; he served, as a captain, at the general headquarters of the Middle East Force from 1942-43, and in 1943 helped to achieve the surrender to the Allies of the Italian garrison at Derna, the second largest city in Cyrenaica, a feat for which he was awarded the Military Cross.  From 1945-46 he served as Education Officer in the British Military Administration in Tripolitania.

 ‘It was 9.30 on Friday morning, a holiday for the Moslem members of my department,’ he would recall regarding events that erupted in Tripoli in the first week of November 1945 and spread.

 ‘But none of the Christian officials had arrived either. There was an ominous silence in the air.  I realised suddenly that there was no traffic on the roads. Ill at ease, I brushed aside my correspondence, and went out into the crisp sunshine. I saw that one, then another, and finally a succession of the concrete houses of the New City carried on their walls the freshly painted legend “Italiano.”

The message was clear.

If I had not understood I was to be enlightened soon enough. A low growl could be heard from the distance. Suddenly they appeared – young hoodlums in their hundreds, sweeping along the road some ten or fifteen abreast screaming “Yahud, Yahud”…’

Standing firm on the spot – owing not to any feelings of bravery but to sheer amazement at what met his eyes and ears – Segal, evidently appearing stern and resolute in his captain’s uniform, was unmolested by the mob.  The yelling procession snaked around him, single-mindedly intent on causing havoc in the Jewish quarter: ‘Then the looting started, shop windows were smashed, and doors battered down.’

Jumping into his military vehicle, Segal

‘visited the Jewish schools in the ghetto area. There was little panic. The children who lived nearby had been sent home; they had nothing to fear, for the Jewish district was too densely populated to be penetrated by even the most daring of the mob.

The staff, mostly Italian Jews, stood in a little knot, speaking in whispers, making their plans calmly with their leader, a professor from Rome, a small ungainly woman with an aquiline nose and nervous smile. I put some children on my lorry and returned them to their mothers in the New City.’

Then,

‘From a remote building I heard moaning. In the bare courtyard, an old Jewish woman in Arab dress sat on the ground, her face streaked with blood, swaying to and fro, keening rhythmically.

Some yards away a man lay wrapped in his coat; his head had been battered like the cheap pans beside him.

Where had the mob gone? Where had they entered here? It was useless to question the woman; God had given and God had taken away.’

Knowing that the police and the military had been alerted, Segal drove back to headquarters:

‘In the palatial villa of the mess everything appeared normal. The fountain played in the sunshine, deck chairs were set out, as usual under the arches, aperitifs stood on the table. The servants reminded me that the Brigadier [Temple] had gone on leave to Cairo. And only a few hundred yards away murderers were hunting down their victims’.

He later wrote:

‘It was the unsuspecting Jews of the outlying villages who were helpless, and the killings were many – in all, I think, more than 130. We could chart on the map the progress of murder, rape and looting passing from Tripoli across the countryside – east, west and south, like a well-organised contagion.

At some points it needed only one or two men to halt the onset – as at Homs where a brave British officer and a Jewish doctor from Alexandria stood at the entrance to the Jewish quarter and threatened to blow out the brains of the first rioter to approach.

Everywhere the bloodshed continued for two days. Jewish refugees were brought to a hastily constructed camp in the capital, I escorted a cortège from Zawiya – one lorry heaped with the bodies of the dead, others with their relatives and friends, some wounded, all dazed and silent, clutching their mean bundles. There was no passion, but submission to the inevitable.’

Reported The Times (8 November 1945):

‘Reports up to yesterday gave totals of 74 Jews and one Arab killed, and 183 Jews, 36 Arabs, and two Italians injured.…

The disturbances began on Sunday night, and were repeated the next night when the mob attacked the Jewish quarter in an eastern suburb.  It was here that the heaviest casualties were caused, 40 Jews being killed and scores wounded.  The Tripolitanian provinces generally remained quiet, but in the eastern provinces there were riots at Cussabat and Zliten…

Stern measures have been taken to prevent further outrages, including a curfew, intensive patrolling by troops and police, who have orders to shoot all looters and to open fire, if necessary, to disperse groups of more than five persons.

The curfew at first was from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., but was confined to the city of Tripoli, but yesterday it was extended throughout Tripolitania and prolonged till 6 a.m.  Plundering has been proclaimed an offence punishable by death, and the British administration has publicly announced that it will not hesitate to increase its measures until peace is restored…

Brigadier Temple, the British military commander in Tripoli,  yesterday received the members of the Arab Advisory Council, headed by the Grand Cadi, and informed them that they must exercise their influence and authority to re-establish law and order.’

The following day the paper advised:

‘The death roll in the Tripolitania riots is now over 100.  A statement received in Cairo tonight from the public information office at Tripoli says that though the city is quiet further attacks against Jews are reported from the provinces.  On Tuesday night rioting occurred at Zliten, in the eastern province, and at Zavia and Zanzur, in the western province.

There was a particularly brutal assault in the Jewish quarter of Zanzur, where Arabs looted and set fire to houses and a synagogue.  Over thirty Jews, including children, were killed in this attack.

At Zavia six Jews lost their lives.  Troops were forced to open fire on the mob several times …’

It added:

‘The Governor of Cairo today called on the Grand Rabbi and expressed the Government’s regret at the attacks on Jews in Cairo last Friday [instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood and rightwing nationalists, apparently trying to whip up anti-Jewish feeling on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration].  He said that the Egyptian Government had decided to rebuild at its own expense the [Ashkenazi] synagogue that was looted and burned by the rioters.

An official statement issued last night forbids the holding of meetings and demonstrations on November 13, the Egyptian national day.’

The murders, sexual violence, looting, and incendiarism in Libya subsided as the British restored order.

To quote Ben Segal:

‘After a couple of weeks, the situation – in the words of the Army authorities – was under control. The Governor had returned to his post at Tripoli. I suppose there was an official inquiry – there usually is. Arab extremists who had been detained after the outbreak of the riots were released. And within a few months (was it by coincidence?) three Jewish officers in the Military Administration had been transferred to duties outside Libya – the major responsible for the municipality (who had been outstandingly successful in his dealings with Arab officials), a doctor, and myself.’

Some 700 Muslims in all were arrested for taking part in the disturbances, which in addition to taking Jewish lives, left hundreds of Jews injured, caused panic among Libya’s non-Muslim minorities, and triggered a refugee crisis.

Reflected Segal:

‘From 1949 the Jewish community of Libya – even the ancient settlement of cave-dwellers at Tarhuna – virtually ceased to exist. Many emigrated to a new life in Israel. Only a handful remained in Tripoli and Benghazi to become the target of anti-Israel malice after the Six-Day War.

The Jews of Libya had never played an important part in the life of their country – they were no more than a pawn in a sinister game of politics. We need not point the finger at the fanatical ignorant Moslem mob. But it should be part of the training of every Foreign Office official and of every responsible journalist to witness at first hand the violence of a rampaging mob – and to learn how fanaticism and violence are manipulated.’

His account was printed in the Jewish Chronicle of 13 November 1970, when he was a prominent academic covered with honours.   For since 1946 he had lectured in Hebrew and Aramaic at the School of Oriental Studies (Professor of Semitic Languages from 1961) – that constituent of London University which (as SOAS) is now notorious for rampant hostility to Israel – retiring in 1978, and serving from 1982-85 as Principal of Leo Baeck College. 

An echo of the events of November 1945 in the form of the Libyan pogrom of June 1967 was provided to the Jewish Chronicle of 21 February 1969 by a non-Jewish New Zealander, Miss Joanne Holland, who had in December 1968 returned to London from Libya, where she had worked as a secretary since 1966 and where she got to know a number of Jews.

The pogrom she described entailed harrowing murders and the burning to the ground of Jewish homes and businesses.  Armed police, she said, stood idly by while Jewish-owned shops were broken into, looted, and set alight.  Such premises included a restaurant-cum-liquor store; Arab rioters ran up and down the street swigging the drink from the stolen bottles, and going back for more, while four armed soldiers with grins on their faces looked on.  A family of Jews who barricaded themselves in their apartment for over a week were shocked when their Arab neighbours, whom they'd lived alongside for 30 years, attempted to gain entry and set the place ablaze.

Children as young as eight were among the mob, and Joanne Holland was "horrified to see women, under normal circumstances never seen, except occasionally peeping out from behind their veils, standing by and watching the destruction and murder with apparent glee".

She herself was several times surrounded by Libyan crowds, and spat at, and once, when visiting a Jewish family, she was almost killed by Arabs wielding iron bars and knives.

She recalled that one Jew, who having hidden in his house for about a week, ventured outside to discover the fate of the shop he owned.  Arabs recognised him and gave chase, so he ran towards a police car, expecting assistance.  Instead of rescuing him, the police ran him over.

One evening, a jeep-load of armed police led by a colonel took two Jewish families – comprising a total of thirteen persons including two young children – from their home on the pretext of taking them to the airport so that they might reach safety.  The families were, however, driven out into the desert, and put to death.

The murderous colonel later explained that he had "wanted to avenge my Arab brothers" (i.e. for Israel's victory in the Six Day War).  However, this appears somewhat disingenuous.  To quote Lucky Nahum, in an observation to me:

‘I am one of the 6,000 Jews in Libya that suffered through the pogrom of 1967 and ultimately exiled. [T]he pogrom was not in reaction to Israel's victory in the Six Day War; if so, it would have started at the war's end. The pogrom began on the very first day of the war, a typically sunny day in Tripoli that turned out to be the beginning of the last pogrom in Libya. [S]ince this was not a reaction to the humiliating defeat of the Arab nations by Israel, it needs to be re-evaluated. I have heard many "excuses" for the pogrom of 1967 (and those before), none that are worthy of consideration. Nasser and his Pan-Arab dreams had fed the beast that desired to not only see Israel destroyed but clearly all Jews.’

The Libyan authorities had finally permitted Jews to leave Libya on temporary travel documents, which prohibited them from taking their belongings or more than £20 with them and would not permit them to return after being away for four months. Those that departed were herded together at dawn by armed soldiers in the forecourt of a hotel, and were surrounded by hostile Arabs shouting and swearing.

What particularly struck Joanne Holland during the pogrom was the unwillingness of westerners stationed in Tripoli to intervene and try to help the Jews being harassed and hunted.  What also shocked her was the apathy of contacts in London, to whom she recounted what she'd witnessed.  "[T]hey seemed bored and showed no interest," she said.  "Many Britons still had some romantic concept of the Arabs.  How wrong they were."

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Posted By Elder of Ziyon to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 6/02/2015 04:00:00 PM