Personal Stories

JIMENA’s long time member and dear friend, Carol Saal, traveled with American Associates of Ben Gurion University, to the Tunisian island of Djerba for the Lag b’Omer festival. JIMENA recently interviewed Carol about her experience exploring Jewish life in Tunisia and we are delighted to share her reflections with you.

Annie Liberman Among the First Wave Leaving Tunisia. There were significant differences in the severity of the treatment suffered by Jews during their uprooting from North Africa and the Middle East. In Iraq the famous farhouds brought terror to a huge Jewish Community and in Egypt many were incarcerated for years with no knowledge of when and if they would be released.

My memories from Tunisia are bittersweet. There are so many happy years, then the war, the German invasion, the liberation – the exile. I was born in Tunis, to a family who lived there for many generations. They came from Spain via Algeria—we did not speak Spanish but my grandparents spoke Arabic and the children knew French.