On the 12th the F.L.N.-impelled mobs extended the scope of their operations to sack the Great Synagogue in the heart of the Casbah which had been built during the reign of Napoleon III and was one of the most important houses of Jewish worship in Algeria. The beautiful building was gutted, the Torah scrolls ripped and desecrated, the walls inscribed with swastikas and slogans of “Death to the Jews”. Several Jewish officials were kidnapped and assassinated in a series of acts of violence which fell on the Jewish community like a thunderbolt.

QUESTION: During the Algerian independence struggle, Algerian Jews were attacked by FLN forces despite being natives — a tragic complexity of decolonization that deserves closer examination.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1311