Yom HaShoah – Lesser Known Story – Haim Arbiv and the Jews of Libya
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[Photo: Majdanek]
On this Yom HaShoah, 2020, while we are all at home pondering the meaning and preciousness of life, let us pause and remember the millions who died and those who suffered during the Shoah. Thanks to one of the highlighted survivor profiles on the Yad Vashem website, I learned about the Jews of Libya who were forced into concentration camps in 1942. This is a very different story than Sam and Esther or the Jews of Poland, but it’s meaningful to learn what happened to Jews living in different countries.
First some background:
Jews lived in Libya for thousands of years – some say since the 10th century BCE. Between 1912 and 1943, Libya was under the control of their neighbor across the sea – Italy.
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[Photo: By Conte di Cavour – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0]
On the eve of World War II, there were 22,000 Jews living in Libya. Zionism was strong, the Rabbinic Council was active, and Synagogues were filled on Shabbat and Holidays. But beginning in late 1938 and continuing into 1939, the Italians enacted anti-Jewish legislation. Jews were removed from municipal councils, public offices, and government schools. Their citizen papers were stamped with the words “Jewish Race.”
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[Photo: Synagogue in Libya (Yad Vashem Photo Archive)]
Mussolini was a great ally of Hitler. So, it’s not surprising that the German army and the SS arrived in Libya. In late 1940, the British and the Germans were battling it out in Libya. The Germans pushed the British out, and with their victory, the treatment of the Jews worsened. The Germans forced most of the Jews to move to Tripoli or Benghazi and deported many to labor camps.
Thus, enters the story of Holocaust survivor, Haim Arbiv. He was born in Benghazi in 1934. In 1942, along with thousands of other Jews, Haim and his family, crammed into trucks, were driven 1,200 kilometers to Giado concentration camp.
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[Photo: Haim Arbiv. Yad Vashem website.]
Before the horrific journey, his parents managed to hide gold coins inside loaves of bread, suitcases and belts, hoping it would help them survive. In Giado, every family received a small amount of living space inside a shack, with only bedsheets separating them. The food at the camp consisted mostly of meager, moldy bread. Hundreds of Jews died of hunger, fatigue and disease in Giado, among them Haim’s newborn niece. Haim’s immediate family avoided starvation thanks to his elder brother and sister, who bought bread from local Bedouins in exchange for the gold coins they had smuggled from home. This trade was very risky, because the guards would shoot whoever approached the camp fences.
In late 1942, Haim learned that the Jewish men in the camp were being concentrated to be murdered. A distraught Haim ran to find his father, but the execution had been called off.
After their liberation by the British army in 1943, the family returned to Benghazi. They rebuilt their destroyed home, and Haim attended a Hebrew-language school set up by soldiers from the Jewish Brigade. His connection to Eretz Israel grew stronger.
Late in 1947, as the fighting between Jews and Arabs in Eretz Israel intensified, Jews began suffering harassment in Libya. Haim’s grandfather was murdered by rioters. The family’s home was attacked, but an Arab neighbor fired a pistol to disperse the rioters and took Haim’s family into his home until tempers cooled.
In 1949, Haim and his family went to Tripoli and boarded a ship to Israel. Due to his command of Arabic, Haim served in the IDF Intelligence Corps in capacities that involved gathering intelligence, conducting research and interrogating prisoners. He was a writer for the IDF magazine Bamahane, and when he traveled to Cairo with the entourage of Prime Minister Menachem Begin to cover the peace talks, he scored an exclusive interview with the Egyptian chief-of-staff.
Haim is a volunteer chess teacher in kindergartens and senior citizens clubs. He has a son, a daughter and five grandchildren.
This narrative tells that being a Jew in Libya was not easy during the war and it only got marginally better after the war was over. At first (1943-1951), Libya was controlled by the allied forces – the British and the French. From 1948 to 1951, and especially after emigration became legal in 1949, 30,972 Jews moved to Israel. This was most of the Jews of Libya.
Libya achieved independence in 1951. In 1969, when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi came to power, there were approximately 100 Jews left in Libya. Gaddafi confiscated all remaining Jewish property and most of the 100 Jews left. It was thought that in 2002, the last known Jew in Libya, Esmeralda Meghnangi, died. However, it was discovered that an 80-year-old Jewish woman, Rina Debach, lived in a nursing home in Libya. In 2002, she moved to Rome, where she had family. After this final exodus, no Jews live in Libya. A sad end to a long and rich part of Jewish history.
On this Yom HaShoah, let us light a candle to illuminate the darnkness and think of people who are suffering all over the world – whether from persecution, war or the covid-19 virus. May we all know only health and peace.
Wikipedia sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Libya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_colonization_of_Libya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Libya
Yad Vashem:
