A rare yellow badge of a Jew from Tunisia, early 1940's

A rare yellow badge of a Jew from Tunisia, early 1940's

A yellow badge that belonged to a Jew from Tunisia during the Holocaust, a Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Israel and served as a well-known journalist.

In March 1943, the Tunisia Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge as a sign of Jewish forced labor, but it was not enforced because of pressure from the Italians. This duty was imposed only in two cities. In Sfax, (a large and central city in Tunisia, where 100 Jewish workers were required to unload military vehicles and build shelters), and partly in Tunis, in other cities, enforcement was not strict. This is why a yellow patch from the Tunis region is rare and almost nonexistent.

Tunisia was the only country in the Islamic countries to be ruled by the Germans. Between 1940 and 1943, the Jews of Tunisia suffered direct and indirect Nazi rule. The laws of the Nazi regime discriminating against the Jews, including the wear of the yellow star, also applied to the Jews of Tunisia. Many Tunisian Jews were sent to forced labor camps. On 9 November 1942, the German and Italian forces entered Tunisia in response to the Allied invasion of Algeria and Morocco. The invasion of the Germans was hastened when the Americans landed in North Africa. The Germans acted to speed up the occupation and rise above the American forces that came to the area. The handling of Jewish affairs was transferred to the German-Italian command, headed by a German general. At the end of November 1942, the Germans took the first anti-Jewish move in the region by arresting four of the community leaders, including Moshe Borjel, the president of the community. The dignitaries were released after a week following the intervention of other important people such as the mayor of Tunis and the Italian consul. 

The Artifacts Collection in the Yad Vashem museum (At the permanent exhibition) has only one yellow badge from Tunisia. The patch that appears in the collection belonged to Israel Emil Yishai from the city of Sousse in Tunisia (during the war Israel was sent to forced labor at the port and at the train station of sus) and is identical in its shape to the yellow star before us. The patch before us was of a Jew who was also a Holocaust survivor from Suss who immigrated to Israel and worked as a journalist.

It is reasonable to assume that if the German army had remained in Tunisia, the situation of the Jews would have worsened. But this army, composed of a few weak soldiers, was an army of disobedience and self-confidence, surrounded by the Allies from all directions, unable to retreat, and invested all its forces in survival. On Friday, May 7, 1943, the Allies liberated Tunisia from the Germans. After six days. The campaign in Tunisia came to an end. In 1946, the Jewish community in the Tunisian capital numbered about 34,200 people. In 1945 the wave of immigration to Israel began, first as an illegal immigration and after the establishment of the State of Israel, a legal immigration within the framework of the Jewish Agency and Youth Aliyah.

A piece of cloth 5x5 cm, on which the yellow star is sewn 4x4 cm. very fine condition.