Two hundred Jewish residents of the ancient ghetto-type slum district, known as the “Hara,” where Jews have lived for many years, were moved today to newly built municipal dwellings.
The shift of the Jewish families was part of a plan of the Tunis Municipal Council to tear down the slum area and re-build the quarter with modern homes. The area was condemned as a hazard to the lives of its inhabitants. The plan provides for a gift to 250 Jewish residents of the equivalent of a year’s rent in their new homes.
President Bourguiba, in his weekly broadcast, declared today he was surprised by the January outburst of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe. He said that the developments dashed hopes that the Nazi apparatus which the incidents had represented “had followed Hitler and his disciples into the grave.”
He contrasted those developments with the situation in Africa where the peoples “respect all races, Jews as well as others,” and added: “We have every reason to state proudly, as Africans, that such discriminations which for a long period have tarnished the reputation of Europe and which today compel governments to intervene and eradicate the last vestiges of Nazism, do not exist in Africa and particularly not in Tunisia.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
