TV Arte en France et en Allemagne

Press Release

Television: Documentaire

AMONG THE RIGHTEOUS:
LOST STORIES FROM THE HOLOCAUST IN ARAB LANDS

Edith Shaked, Arizona

A new documentary film based on the book by Robert Satloff
Directed by Emmy-award winner William Cran
Narrated by Robert MacNeil, former anchor and executive editor, MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour
Sponsored by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

TV Arte en France et en Allemagne: Mercredi le 2 Juin 2010

A 22:00 (9 heure du soir)

Did any Arabs save Jews during the Holocaust?

Seeking a hopeful response to the problems of Holocaust ignorance and denial in the Arab world, and in the wake of 9/11, Middle East expert Robert Satloff set out on what would become an eight-year journey to find an Arab hero whose story would change the way Arabs view Jews, themselves, and their own history. Along the way, Rob Satloff found not only the Arab heroes for whom he started his quest but a vast, lost history of what actually happened to the half-million Jews of the Arab lands of North Africa under Nazi, Vichy, and Fascist rule.

Dr. Robert Satloff: “the attempt by Germany and its allies to annihilate the Jewish people during World War II remains without parallel. … From the outset, German plans to persecute and eventually to exterminate Jews extended throughout all lands Germany and its allies hoped to conquer, which included a great Arab expense, extending from Casablance to Tripoli and onward to Cairo. …”

“Le livre de Satloff definitivement confirme que la solution final au probleme Juif a ete implemente dans les possessions d’Europe en Afrique du Nord – Le Maroc, L’Algerie, la Tunisie et la Libye. Satloff ecrit: “Evidence of German ambition to target the Jews of these Arab lands can be found in the country-by-country plan for the extermination of Jews approved by Nazi leaders who gathered at the infamous Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. … Nazi planners … including Eichmann, … formulated the systematic plan for the excecution of the “final solution.” … unoccupied France had 700,000 Jews. In reality, there were fewer than 200,000.

How could the exacting, meticulous Nazi planners – who concerned themselves with the most minute logistical problems of transportating millions to their death, disposing of their remains, and hiding this hideous crime from the world – make such a huge error?

Could the Germans have simply made a mistake? No.

The hugely inflated Wannsee number for the Jews of unoccupied France was no mistake, because it included the hundreds of thousands of Jews who lived in France’s North African possessions: the colony of Algeria and the two protectorates … of Morocco … and … Tunisia.

It is also the view expressed to me {Satloff} by Professor Robert O. Paxton, coauthor of Vichy France and the Jews, in an e-mail correspondence, October 8, 2003. For further on Wannsee and the Jews of North Africa, see Edith Shaked, “The Holocaust: Reexaminng the Wannsee Conference, Himmler’s Appointments Book, and Tunisian Jews,”

The Nizkor Project.” The Nizkor Project, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/s/shaked-edith/re-examining-wannsee.html "

Satloff’s book convinced “the German government to offer financial reparations to thousands of Jews who suffered in the more than one hundred forced labor camps set up by Germany and its allies throughout the Arab lands of North Africa." End quotations from Satloff's book.

Selon Satloff, les premieres communautes Juives qui ont ete liberees etaient les communautes en Afrique du Nord francaise et Italienne.” Edith Shaked, Holocaust Educator and Moderator.

http://www.ushmm.org/shared/search/searchresults.php?cx=008795841384874293445:jtbtbquu4k8&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A11&q=north%20africa

http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206407.pdf ”

 
Produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and filmed on location in Tunisia, Morocco, France, Israel, and the United States, the surprising discoveries chronicled in this film are already challenging how both Arabs and Jews view a long-forgotten chapter of the darkest moment in modern times.