"Song of the Oppressed"

During World War II, thousands of North African Jews living under the rule of Vichy France and German occupation forces were imprisoned in forced labor camps.¹ Tunisian Jews worked in extreme desert heat to construct railroads, build factories, and clear airfields. In 1942, a twelve-year-old Tunisian boy named Allouche Trabelsi penned this poem—"Song of the Oppressed"—describing these experiences.

Trabelsi wrote this poem in the Tunisian dialect of Judeo-Arabic he spoke, and it could be sung to an unidentified popular Arabic melody of the period.² As many as several hundred copies of the poem may have been distributed at the time.³ The lyrics describe the brutal conditions of ten separate forced labor camps in the region—extreme hunger and starvation, grueling physical work, and abuse by the guards. The song also describes the frequent Allied bombings in the area of these camps, where Jews were made to clear airfields that remained active bombing zones.

German forces only occupied Tunisia from November 1942 to May 1943, but they implemented several policies targeting Jews in that short time. In the city of Sfax, German authorities forced Jews to identify themselves by wearing a yellow Star of David, and they planned to extend the policy to the rest of the country.⁴ Tunisian Jewish men were abducted and pressed into forced labor.⁵ In all, German occupation forces sent about 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men to forced labor camps in the North African desert.⁶

Allied advances in North Africa in 1943 brought the German occupation to an end after only eight months. Tunisian Jews did not experience the same prolonged genocidal campaign that Nazi Germany waged against European Jews, but this poem reflects how Nazi persecution threatened the existence of the Tunisian Jewish community during the relatively short period of the German occupation.

At least 67 German, French, and Italian forced labor camps existed in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Geoffrey Megargee, et al., eds., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Vol. III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany (Bloomington: Indiana Press University Press in association with USHMM, 2018); Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 57–71.

Judeo-Arabic is a language written in Hebrew with some Arabic letters and vocabulary, with many different dialects and spoken by the Jews of North Africa. This printed copy of "Song of the Oppressed" uses Latin characters in place of Judeo-Arabic script.

Only one complete copy is known to exist, which resides in the rare book collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Michael Saraf, The Hitler Scroll of North Africa: Moroccan and Tunisian Jewish Literature on the Fall of the Nazis [Rockville, MD: Haberman Institute, 1988], 87–95).

German forces never fully occupied North Africa, and several key colonial holdings remained in the hands of France and Italy throughout the war. By November 1942, Allied forces had invaded the region, eventually driving the German army out of Africa by mid-1943.

On December 6, 1942, SS colonel Walter Rauff demanded a list of 2,000 Jews for forced labor. When only 128 men reported for work on December 9, the SS stormed the local synagogue in Tunis as well as the Jewish neighborhoods and discovered 1,500 additional Jews, whom they marched to the work site some 40 miles away.

For more information, see Daniel Lee, "The Commisariat Général aux Questions Juive in Tunisia and the Implementation of Vichy’s Anti-Jewish Legislation" in The Holocaust and North Africa (Aomar Boum and Sarah Stein, eds), Stanford: Stanford University Press in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018, 132–148. For more information about the camps under French and Italian control, see The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany (Joseph R. White, ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018, 240–243 and 527–529. Camps under German control in Tunisia will be outlined in a forthcoming volume in this series.

Most likely a reference to German occupying forces.

All of the camps listed in this song were located in the Saharan desert. An overview essay outlining those under French Vichy control can be found in The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany (Joseph R. White, ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018, 240–243. Camps under German control in Tunisia will be outlined in a forthcoming volume in this series.

The poet refers to the assembly for forced labor of Tunisian men.

Reference to the Allied bombing campaigns in the region between September of 1940 and May of 1943.

Those involved in forced labor (often the building of the trans-Saharan railroad) were forced to bring their own shovels.

Referring to the tools of forced labor in the desert.

Nickname for the Italians, who ran many of the forced labor camps in the area. The Romans are referred to as the "destroyers of the scroll" because of their role in the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

This stanza refers to the Allied bombing raids in North Africa. Jews were often forced to clear the mine fields for the German troops.

Refrain: The oppressed, be gracious I pray thee, my God, the oppressed, be gracious I pray thee, my God, barefoot and with torn clothes, be gracious I pray thee, my God.

They ambushed us
And we were on our feet [in] lines, lines
The soldiers¹ and the commander encircled us
Alas, my God, what will happen now?

Alas, my God, how [is] this
The soldiers arrived with strength
They multiplied and spoke to me: Hey, Jew
Come after us now!

It was delayed destruction
Every night passed in a moment
How early work is tomorrow
We resembled prisoners