Cherrick Lecture: Jews and Muslims in French North Africa: The Story of King Mohammed V of Morocco Saving Jews during the Holocaust, 1940-2026

Following the fall of France in 1940, the French colonial governments of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco became a part of the collaborationist Vichy regime.  The over 400,000 thousand Jews living in these countries—the region with the largest concentration of Jews in the Islamic world—were subjected to anti-Jewish legislation modeled on the Nazi Nuremberg race laws, and thousands of Jews were interned in forced labor camps.  In the French protectorate of Morocco, Mohammed V, the figurehead ruler of Morocco exercised his religious authority to object to the anti-Semitic laws against his Jewish subjects. Although powerless to prevent the anti-Jewish laws from being enacted, Mohammed V’s defiance of the French authorities lessened the severity of the persecution of the Jews, and as the story goes, protected his Jewish subjects from the Holocaust.  The story of Mohammed V’s courageous stance to protect the Jews became a symbol of Moroccan sovereignty and the unwavering commitment to the Jews as loyal citizens of independent Morocco. Most Moroccan Jews left Morocco in the 1950s and 1960s, but the story of Mohammed V saving Jews during the Holocaust became a source of pride and attachment to Morocco among the hundreds of thousands of Jews of Moroccan descent in the countries they lived, especially in Israel where the largest diaspora of Moroccan Jews now resides.  For the Moroccan monarchy, the story is central to promoting Morocco’s foreign policy objectives, legitimizing its role as a mediator in Arab/Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiations, from the 1970s to the Abraham Accords in 2020. In contrast to the unending conflict that continues to divide Muslims and Jews, the symbol of the good Muslim king protecting his Jewish subjects during the Holocaust offers a counternarrative of co-existence, tolerance, and politics of hope.

This event is free and open to the public. Reception begins at 5:30pm with lecture to follow at 6:00pm. 

About the Speakers:

Aomar Boum is the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Department of History and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. A historical anthropologist, Boum is interested in the place of religious and ethnic minorities such as Jews, Baha’is, Shias and Christian in post-independence Middle Eastern and North African nation states.

Daniel Schroeter holds the Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish History at University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He studies Muslim-Jewish relations from early modern times to the present in the Middle East and North Africa, with a particular focus on Morocco.

The Adam Cherrick Lecture Fund in Jewish Studies at Washington University was established in 1988 by Jordan and Lorraine Cherrick of St. Louis, MO in memory of their son. Its purpose is to advance Jewish studies at Washington University. Since its inception, the fund has benefited both the university community and St. Louis at large by bringing world renowned scholars to speak on campus.