Tuesday 6 September 2022, 7:30 pm UK time. Sixty years have passed since the mass exodus of 130,000 Jews from Algeria. Of the 850,000 who fled Arab countries, the Jews of Algeria were unusual: they held French nationality, although the community was indigenous.
The Jews tried to maintain neutrality as the war for independence gathered pace, but ulimately to no avail. Together with the French settlers or ‘pieds noirs’, the Jews were given a stark choice by Algerian Muslim independence fighters: suitcase or coffin. The great majority  were ‘repatriated’ to France. Our speaker Jessica R Hammerman has made an academic study of the Jews of Algeria and is the author of Heart of the Diaspora: Algerian Jews during the War of Independence 1954 – 1962 (2012)