The Moroccan Sultan Who Protected His Country’s Jews During World War II | History

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The Moroccan Sultan Who Protected His Country’s Jews During World War II | History

Mohammed (seated at left) with Franklin D. Roosevelt (center) and Winston Churchill (right) at a 1943 war conference near Casablanca

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The year was 1940; the setting, Morocco. Located at the northwestern tip of *******, it’s a sun-drenched country brimming with ******—oranges, blues and greens—and replete with the sweet smells of

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and

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.

At the time, Morocco wasn’t yet an independent kingdom. France established a

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over the country in 1912, effectively running Morocco but allowing it to keep its sovereign, the sultan.

The ruler in question was 30-year-old

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. He had ****** hair, thick eyebrows and wistful eyes. As

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, a historian and the author of

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, wrote in a 2017 op-ed for the

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, Mohammed was “an unlikely ruler” who was never supposed to sit on the throne.

Mohammed as a young man

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His father, Sultan

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, ***** in 1927. Mohammed’s eldest brother was expected to succeed him. But France handed 18-year-old Mohammed the crown instead. “The French put Mohammed on the throne because they thought he was more pliable and would be more [easily] manipulated,” Hurowitz tells Smithsonian magazine. “They thought he was going to be a puppet.”

This prediction proved disastrously wrong. In time, the sultan would lead Morocco to

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and become its king under the name Mohammed V. But in 1940, that was still 17 years away.

For now, evil was on the march in Europe.

Under Adolf *******, ***** Germany was conquering territory after territory. *******’s armies appeared to be unstoppable. Everywhere they went, they spread the poison of antisemitism. In May 1940, the Germans

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. A month later, France fell. The Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis, emerged in the

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’s wake. Its jurisdiction covered most of southern France, as well as the French

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.

A group photo taken at a bar mitzvah celebration in Fez in 1943

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Vichy officials quickly moved to implement antisemitic decrees against the

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who lived in Morocco. The country was majority *******, but Jews were

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into Moroccan society. Though antisemitism existed, the ******* community was not actively

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. It was actually

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with the ruling Alaouite dynasty and benefited from the royals’ protection.

“There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects,” Mohammed reportedly

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. Unsurprisingly, Vichy officials didn’t like that kind of talk, and the sultan butted heads with them repeatedly.

Mohammed opposed the Vichy decrees, which

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where Jews could live, work and go to school. As

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wrote in his 1997 French-language study,

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, the sultan was “a spontaneous antiracist.” Mohammed was also motivated by his ******* ******. As Morocco’s leader, he was

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, or “Commander of the Faithful,” the supreme religious authority for his people. Mohammed saw looking after Moroccan Jews as his ****-given responsibility. “Moroccan Jews are my subjects,” he

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the Vichy government, “… and it is my duty to protect them against aggression.”

A group portrait of Moroccan ******* women drinking tea, circa 1940 to 1950

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Mohammed initially tried to block the decrees. But he had power in name only. Vichy had the final say, and the regime

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the measures in October 1940. In accordance with the rules of the protectorate, Mohammed was obliged to affix his signature on them.

But Mohammed reassured his ******* subjects that he would stand by them. Sometime later, in a secret meeting at his palace, he told ******* leaders that the decrees changed nothing. As far as he was concerned, Moroccan Jews were the equals of Moroccan Muslims.

Vichy saw it differently. As a

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of the decrees, many

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lost their jobs. Children were expelled from public schools. And, much as in Europe, some families were kicked out of their homes and

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in squalid ghettos.

Some historians, like Assaraf, argue that Mohammed tried to ensure the decrees weren’t enforced. Other scholars

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the ruler’s motives and the extent of his efforts to protect Morocco’s Jews. As Susan Gilson Miller

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in A History of Modern Morocco, “His stand was based as much on the insult the Vichy diktats posed to his claim of sovereignty over all his subjects, including the Jews, as his humanitarian instincts.” Because the archival record is spotty, the debate ******** ongoing.

Mohammed, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1943 Casablanca Conference. Prince Hassan is shown standing behind his father.

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Mohammed had little incentive to speak out against the Vichy government. By the end of 1940, ***** Germany seemed positioned to win the war. The ******* States and the ******* Union had yet to enter the fray. A much more prominent wartime leader, Pope Pius XII,

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the ***** persecution of Jews. He even had a

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to *******.

But Mohammed was made of different stuff. He refused to meet with ***** officials in Morocco. And, when all eyes were on him, he took a stand. Though he lacked political agency, the sultan had something else: symbolic power.

In November 1941, Morocco marked the

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, a holiday held yearly to celebrate Mohammed’s sultanate. After a long day of pageantry, the ruler hosted a banquet. By his side were his

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: rabbis and ******* notables.

Vichy officials were incensed at the presence of Jews in the royal court. They took it as an affront to their authority, which was precisely what Mohammed had intended. According to a report in the French state archives, Mohammed told them, “I absolutely do not approve of the new antisemitic laws, and I refuse to associate myself with a measure I disagree with. I reiterate as I did in the past that the Jews are under my protection, and I ******* any distinction that should be made among my people.”

Mohammed (left) with French President Vincent Auriol in 1950

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“It’s a huge deal,” says Hurowitz. “Mohammed took a very principled stand.” But this show of support came with major risks. The historian adds, “There was a war going on, and people were more than willing to swap leaders out at any time. It wouldn’t have been a huge difficulty at all for [Vichy] to have engineered Mohammed being ******* or replaced. Things like that happened. It was actually at his own personal peril because it was a slap in the face of Vichy.”

But Mohammed’s audacity also kept Vichy in check. The sultan’s actions showed his French minders that he wouldn’t forsake Moroccan Jews. “What he did ended up delaying actions that could have been taken earlier,” Hurowitz says. “If he hadn’t taken a stand, then Jews could have been rounded up before the Allies came.”

At dawn on November 8, 1942,

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U.S. troops

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at the port towns of Safi and Fedala on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Vichy forces didn’t stand a chance, and they soon lost control of the country. Mohammed welcomed the Allies with open arms and

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to continue the ******. In 1943, he hosted the Allies’

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, where he rubbed shoulders with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. And in 1945, the sultan walked up the Champs-Élysées in the recently liberated city of Paris with French leader Charles de Gaulle.

Mohammed had stood on the right side of history. No Moroccan **** was sent to the ***** ****** camps under his watch, though some

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were interned at

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in the Sahara as political prisoners who opposed the collaborationist regime. Many of these inmates ***** of hunger, exhaustion and ********.

Similar camps existed in Algeria and Tunisia, both of which were under Vichy control.

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, as a French colony, had stringent antisemitic laws. But in

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, another protectorate, local administrators tried to soften the *****. They

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in Moncef Bey, the ruler of Tunis, who made a point of awarding royal distinction to prominent ******* doctors and entrepreneurs within days of ascending to the throne.

View of a dam being built at the Im Fout labor camp in Morocco in 1941 or 1942

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Mohammed’s actions during World War II earned him the “eternal gratitude” of Moroccan Jews,

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, head of the Council of ******* Communities of Morocco, in 2005. Consider, for instance,

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, a prominent entrepreneur who founded a global consultancy headquartered in New York. “I’m very attached to my country, Morocco,” Attias

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a French TV network in 2014. “I really have a deep root to my country for a very simple reason”: Mohammed’s integrity during the war. “I believe it’s this duty of memory that made me stay Moroccan, even if I left Morocco at 16,” Attias said.

“When millions of Jews faced the horrors of the Holocaust, … Mohammed V provided a safe haven for his ******* subjects,” wrote ******** President Isaac Herzog in a 2022

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to Mohammed VI, the current king of Morocco and Mohammed V’s grandson. Herzog added, “Wherever they are, Moroccan Jews recall with pride and affection the memory of your grandfather.”

So ends the tale of the sultan who stood up to evil. But there’s a coda: The French government

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in 1953, fearing he would lead Morocco to independence. But he didn’t stay in exile for long. The sultan made a comeback in 1955 and reclaimed his throne. Morocco gained independence a year later. Under this new regime, Mohammed gave Jews the same rights as Muslims and pledged that the crown would always protect them.

Since the 1940s, Morocco’s ******* population has decreased steadily, leaving a community of around

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today. Many Jews

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from Morocco to ******* to play a part in building the ******* state. Some went to

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in search of economic opportunities. Still others left due to rising antisemitic sentiment in the ***** world and

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between ******* and ***** countries.

The future Mohammed VI and his father, Hassan II, in 1967

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But throughout these decades of turmoil, one constant remained: The Alaouite kings always stood by the ******* community. They made it clear that Jews had a place in Morocco.

Mohammed

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after a minor surgery in 1961. His son

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was a

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for *******-******* coexistence. At a state dinner in 1995, U.S. President Bill Clinton

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Hassan, “In a region where passion and hatred have so often overwhelmed cooler heads and clearer minds, yours has always been a voice of reason and tolerance.”

Hassan’s son Mohammed VI has followed in his forebears’ footsteps. ​​The 2011 Moroccan constitution

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the country’s “indivisible national identity” has been “nourished and enriched” by “Hebraic” influence, among others. And in recent years, the king has led the way in

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Moroccan ******* culture.

The elder Mohammed would have been proud. “All Moroccans, ******* and *******, are subjects of the same nation,” he said in 1957. “They must act together.”

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#Moroccan #Sultan #Protected #Countrys #Jews #World #War #History

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