A Forgotten Exodus

At the start of the 20th century, around one million Jews lived in the Middle East and North Africa. They were often persecuted and didn’t have the same rights as their fellow Muslim countrymen did. Their precarious situation became even more dire after the establishment of Israel. Protests broke out and in North Africa there was a strong increase in atrocities committed against local Jews. By the end of the 1970’s, almost the entire Jewish population had fled from the Arab world. In this two-part documentary eight people from Yemen, Aden, Iraq, Egypt, Lybia, Syria and Morocco share their stories.