http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php ... d=10007312Immediately after the Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco, the Germans occupied Tunisia. On November 23, 1942, the Germans arrested Moises Burgel, the president of the Tunis Jewish community, and several other prominent Jews. Resistance to the German persecution of Tunisian Jews came from the sympathetic Vichy resident-general Admiral Estéva, the mayor of Tunis, Sheikh al-Madina 'Aziz Jallouli, and the Italians, who requested that any measures against Tunisian Jews exclude those Jews who were Italian citizens.
In early December, the Germans demanded that Burgel and Chief Rabbi Haïm Bellaïche dissolve Jewish community institutions and ordered the Chief Rabbi to provide Jewish workers for the Axis forces. By this time, the Germans had notified Vichy and Tunisian authorities that they could no longer interfere with German dealings with the Jews. Two days later, the Jewish leaders supplied a list of 2,500 Jews; only 128 Jews showed up for work. The Germans conducted a sweep of the Jewish neighborhood of Tunis and sent those Jews they captured to a camp at Cheylus, near the city. At the same time, the SS arrested one hundred Jewish notables in the Tunis community headquarters in order to compel them to provide Jewish workers for forced labor.
Approximately 5,000 Tunisian Jewish men were conscripted for almost forty detention camps and forced labor areas near the front lines. These camps were run by both the Germans and the Italians; the most important one was the military port at Bizerte, under German control. The Jewish notables set up committees to improve the lives of the internees by classifying workers as sick and helping them escape. This became progressively easier because discipline in the camps broke down as the Axis hold on Tunisia weakened.
Despite being worn down by the Allied land and air strikes in spring 1943, German authorities continued to persecute the Tunisian Jews. For example, the Germans imposed fines on Tunisian Jewish communities, ostensibly to compensate civilian victims of Allied bombings. In March 1943, rightwing antisemitic French colonists robbed Jewish homes and stores and denounced twenty members of the anti-Vichy resistance, some of them Jews, to the German authorities. The Germans transferred those arrested to concentration camps in Europe.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 10,00.htmlSS Unit Created to Kill Jews in North Africa
Behind the front line of Rommel's Afrikakorps, a special unit was created in July 1942 to to plan the murder of Jews in the region. It was led by SS Obersturmbannführer, or Lieutenant Colonel, Walther Rauff, an experienced mass murderer who helped develop the mobile gassing vehicles the Germans used to murder Jewish people in their campaign in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Rauff and his men were empowered to "take executive measures against the civilian population", Nazi jargon for robbery, murder and enslavement.
The Jews of Palestine were spared that fate. In October 1942 the Allies halted the German advance at the Egyptian town of El Alamein and thereby destroyed the myth of Rommel's invincibility. The Desert Fox had to evacuate his beaten army to Tunisia, back where his African campaign began.
The SS had established a network of labor camps in Tunisia. More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in six months of German rule, and the regular army was also involved in executions.
Rauff's men seized silver, jewellery and sacred objects. On the Tunisian island of Djerba alone, 43 kilograms of gold was taken from the local Jewish population. The SS later deposited the treasure in the sea off the island of Corsica. Ever since, the undiscovered "Rommel's Treasure" has attracted generations of treasure hunters.
Rommel's reputation was spared only because his strategy failed.
In short, Rommel wasn't a hardcore Nazi, but he didn't object to hardcore Nazis killing Jews in territories the Afrika Korps would control.
