The Memory of War and the Historical Memory of Vichy Work Camps in Tunisia through Albert Memmi’s The Pillar of Salt

Abstract

The effects of Vichy anti-Jewish laws in North Africa were particularly devastating in Tunisia. Approximately 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men were detained and sent to forced labor camps run by the Germans and the Italians. The present paper analyzes Albert Memmi’s descriptions in his 1953 novel, The Pillar of Salt, of arbitrary arrests, spoliations, raids, ransoming, and requisitions for forced labor in work camps. A Tunisian Jew, Memmi included his recollections of a labor camp in the final part of his novel. The book gives a precise idea of the climate established by the Nazis and its disastrous consequences for Tunisian Jews. Internees were given unnecessary chores, humiliated, and provoked to retributive behavior. Hygiene, food, and living conditions were deplorable.

Memmi attempted to present the historical memory of Tunisian Jews basing on his own experience of the camp system, his escape with a group of friends, and the day when fighting commenced. As an author, Memmi became aware of the intertwinement existing between the individual and the collective memory of Tunisian Jews under the German occupation.