JEWS AMONG ARABS DURING THE HOLOCAUST
“in these eight years, Prof. Robert Satloff unearthed and chronicles three Arabs who saved Jews. At the same time, as difficult as it was for him to unearth these unusual (even atypical) souls, it is just as clear that, largely, the descendants of these men are only grudgingly accepting of their forebears’ efforts to save those most of their contemporaries now despise.”   AMONG THE RIGHTEOUS Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab LandsConceived by Prof. Robert Satloff Narrated by Robert MacNeil  Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus
Among the Righteous, which required eight years to complete, is indeed valuable and compulsively interesting. But as Phyllis Chesler writes (in pajamas media), this is something of a false notion–in these eight years, Prof. Robert Satloff unearthed and chronicles three Arabs who saved Jews. At the same time, as difficult as it was for him to unearth these unusual (even atypical) souls, it is just as clear that, largely, the descendants of these men are only grudgingly accepting of their forebears’ efforts to save those most of their contemporaries now despise.Â
 The filmmaker has to convince the progeny of these saviors to accept the honor of their parents’ actions. They would, in a word, rather leave old ghosts buried, even if the ghosts are now being feted for bravery and decency.
 Prof. Satloff says he could not find documented Arab/Muslim women who saved Jews, but acknowledged that many Arab women, without special documentation he could find other than hearsay, took in Jewish children, and certainly helped with feeding Jews, because Arabs/Muslims in North Africa got more generous food rations than Europeans, and both got more than did Jews, the lowest of the low, especially in Vichy-ruled Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria and so on.
I was conflicted while moved because in my month in North Africa, this February, I heard none of the information needed that I sought on these matters. Instead, my local informant/guide gave me the pretty history of the Romans and the various dead peoples who left picturesque ruins and mortuary stele. The brutal treatment–by and large–of the N. African and escapee European Jews, thousands upon thousands of whom were interned in horrific concentration camps in the three countries bordering the Med, despite an occasional imamic fatwa (Algeria, note-worthily) forbidding Muslims to co-opt the effects or properties of the Jews in camps and in incarcerations. And elsewhere, where the king refused to go along with the Vichy nazis to force ‘his’ Jews to wear the ugly yellow identifier, JUDE. These were exceptions. The rule was grotesque, even compliant cooperation.
 Where I was constantly unsettled was the accuracy of Satloff’s claim: Indeed, where the European aspect of the murder of more than 6 million Jews was copiously recorded in film, photography, records (the meticulous Germanic obsession) and personal histories captured in book and tape and Spielberg’s Shoah recordings, few today have ever heard of this North African contingent of Holocaust that murdered so many, with so little remnant left. Professor Satloff is owed a huge debt, an enormous debt, for his massive digging in stubbornly opaque libraries and hamlets now crumbling.
 Elsewhere, yellow stars. They were systematically denied rights given to African Muslims. They were beaten, underfed, and worked to death in the swelter of the desert. Â
 Yes: They had it slightly better than European Jews, who were frozen and worked to death or incinerated. But relative terribleness is no comfort to those imprisoned, dragooned into slavery, guillotined or shot for nothing but for being Jewish.
marion ds dreyfus                     . . .                        20©10
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