A Companion to the Holocaust, First Edition. Edited by Simone Gigliotti and Hilary Earl.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Redrawing Holocaust Geographies:
A Cartography of Vichy and Nazi
Reach into North Africa
AOMAR BOUM
On December 15, 2017, a Holocaust traveling exhibition about the relationship between
Nazi ideology and the Holocaust, “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,”
was in its final planning stages at the National Library in Tunis after months of prepara-
tion. While the event was primarily a local Tunisian initiative spearheaded by historian
Habib Kazdaghli, a professor of history at Manouba University, the exhibition benefitted
from the logistical and financial support of UNESCO, the United Nations, the German
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, DC. The organizers never expected that this major event would take place
just hours after the US President Donald Trump recognized al-Quds/Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel, which in itself triggered a local protest against the exhibition and its
organizers concomitant with demonstrations in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and
Gaza. Despite the temporary disruption of the opening event by pro-Palestinian Tunisian
protestors who tore down posters and chanted anti-Israel slogans, the exhibition’s organ-
izers defied the demonstrators. In the following days students from different parts of
Tunisia visited the National Library with their teachers to learn about Nazi propaganda.
For Kazdaghli, an active member of the Société d’Histoire des Juifs de Tunisie et
l’Afrique du nord, this event, irrespective of its controversial global political context, is a
teaching moment for Tunisian youth to learn about the six-month German occupation
of Tunisia and the history of Jewish labor in Vichy camps as well as the fate of many
Tunisian Jews who died in European concentration camps.
1
For pro-Palestinian political
and civil society activists, such as Kawtar Chebbi, Kazdaghli was a sponsor of “lies and
myths” about the Holocaust and noted that Kazdaghli was engaged in a brainwashing
mission of Tunisia’s youth and promoting what he termed the “Zionist entity and
the Israeli State.” Despite this rejection of Holocaust-related events in North Africa, a
number of conferences have been organized by Arab youth about World War II and
North African Jews. In 2011, in collaboration with Kivunim association, the Rabat-
based Mimouna Club held a meeting about Mohammed V and his role in saving