Aldo Naouri is a famous French pediatrician, he is also a Lybian Jew by birth.
He was born in Benghazi (the second largest city in Lybia) in 1937. His mother’s family had been in Lybia for numerous generations and had the status of dhimmi in the Ottoman Empire. This status did not change when Italy invaded Lybia in 1911. As for his father’s family, they must have come from Algeria and were French citizens although they had been in Lybia for five generations and thus had not acquired French citizenship through the Cremieux Decree of 1870 like other Algerian Jews.
In 1942, Italian authorities decided to expulse “alien citizens” and send them back to their countries of origin. Thus Naouri’s family, along with 24 other French families, had to go to the nearest French territory, Algeria. Needless to say, it did not matter that not one of them had never set foot in Algeria before nor that they could not speak French. This was quite an incongruous situation since at the same time other Algerian Jews were being stripped of their French nationality.
The trip lasted two months. When they reached the border between Tunisia and Algeria, they had to show their papers to a French official. Naouri’s eldest brother (who was 22 at the time) was the one who was dealing with the authorities. He handed the papers and was astounded to be called Monsieur (Sir) for the first time in his life. In Italian-ruled Lybia he was called cane ebreo (Dog Jew). Aldo Naouri notes that this incident had made such an impact on his brother that it shaped his relationship with France for the rest of his life.
2 Comments
May 21, 2008 at 3:49 am
so interesting, thanks for sharing this.
May 21, 2008 at 6:19 am
Thank you Phyllis.