Gislaine Diaine
ALGERIA
Filled with fear and faced with the threat of attack from armed anti-colonial nationalists, Gislaine Diaine and her family fled to France in 1961. Today she is a language pathologist and living in Paris.
Timeline of the Jews in Algeria
Jewish refugees flee into North Africa, and are welcomed by the Berbers.
Jewish immigrants flee the Visigoths and arrive in Byzantine North Africa under the rule of Islamic armies.
The Spanish Inquisition. Sephardi Jews settle in Algeria.
Three large Jewish communities are fully established, in Algiers, Bejaia, and Oran.
Jewish rabbinical courts are placed under French jurisdiction. The colonial government begins appointing chief rabbis.
Algerian Jews granted French citizenship. Anti-Semitism takes hold in the French expatriate community.
Jewish shops are looted and burned, and two Jews are killed. Algerian army ignores the pogrom.
The Constantine pogrom. 34 Jews are killed and 200 stores pillaged.
Algerian Jews stripped of their citizenship. Restored in 1943, after Algeria’s liberation.
Algeria secures independence from France. 100,000 Jews emigrate. Algerian citizenship extended to Muslims, not Jews. 6,500 Jews stay behind.
All but one of Algeria’s synagogues are seized by the government and converted to mosques.
50 Algerian Jews remain.