Why would a Moroccan Jew visit the Chamber of the Holocaust in the Old City of Jerusalem?
I wondered this when I recently chanced upon the above photographs of my father Nessim z”l, from his second-ever trip to Israel, in 1968.
His first time in Israel was 1948. Born and raised in the mellah (Jewish quarter) of Marrakesh, my father left Morocco for Paris in 1946. On May 14, 1948 – the day of Israel’s declaration of independence – my father joined hundreds of volunteers who went to defend Israel (see photo below, my father is seated first from right).
In the War of Independence, my father served in the Palmach. His first time in Jerusalem – 1949 – the Old City was already occupied by the Jordanians. He only saw it from a distance.
Following the liberation of the Old City in 1967, my father returned to Israel and visited the sacred sites. I found pictures of him at the Kotel and various other classic spots.
But why the photographs at the Chamber of the Holocaust on Mount Zion (Israel’s first-ever Holocaust museum)? What was his connection to the tragic story told in that place?
Growing up in LA, my family lived in an apartment building where many of our neighbors were Holocaust survivors. As I noticed the numbers tattooed on their arms and the trauma etched on their faces, I started to ask them questions about their experiences.
“Did you ever experience anything like this in Morocco?” I curiously asked my father.
“Almost” answered my father. “We came very close to the same fate as that of our neighbors here.”
From 1940-1942, Morocco was occupied by the pro-Nazi Vichy French regime, and Jews were subject to anti-Jewish legislation.
“I remember when the Vichy regime demanded to know the number of Jewish children living in the mellah,” my father recounted. “I was a teenager, and I was one of a few boys tasked with going door to door, asking how many children live in each home. At the time, we had no idea why.”
Thanks to Operation Torch, the Allied liberation of North Africa in November 1942, my father and the Jewish children in the Mellah were spared the tragic fate of European Jewry.
I’m sure his visit to the Chamber of the Holocaust was a pilgrimage of gratitude and pain – pain for the six million victims and gratitude that he and his lists of kids were saved.
That “almost” experience is why my father took me to so many Holocaust films and Yom Hashoah ceremonies. To make sure I understood that this tragedy belongs to all of us – our neighbors, my father, me, and the entire Jewish people.
Thank you, Papa.
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the international director of the Sephardic Educational Center.
