Eleanor Roosevelt and the Immigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel
By John F. Sears1
Eleanor Roosevelt visits patients at a Malben clinic. Israel, 1952 - JDC Archives
Eleanor Roosevelt advocated on behalf of Jewish refugees seeking to enter the United States before, during, and after World War II. Beginning in the late 1930s, she also took an interest in the work of Youth Aliyah to bring Jewish children to Palestine and train them in the skills needed for the development of Jewish settlements there. In 1952, she became World Patron of Youth Aliyah at the invitation of Moshe Kol, its director. In that role, she visited Israel four times and became an effective fundraiser for Hadassah, Youth Aliyah’s sponsor in the United States. I tell this neglected part of her story in my book Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Jewish Plight, and the Founding of Israel (2021). This essay examines another part of the story: her diplomatic efforts, working with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and Moroccan leaders to facilitate the immigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel and to prevent a threatened famine in Morocco.
Eleanor Roosevelt became involved in Moroccan affairs through Justine Polier, a close friend and ally in matters concerning Jewish refugees and child welfare, who became president of the Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress. After the American and British liberation of North Africa in November 1942, Polier solicited Roosevelt’s help in getting the American government to persuade the new French authorities in North Africa to rescind the discriminatory laws against the Jews imposed by the Vichy government. Later, she learned more about the plight of Moroccan Jews through another Jewish friend, René Cassin, one of her colleagues on the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a chief architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In September 1951, Cassin introduced her to Jules Braunschvig, vice president of the l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French Jewish organization that had established a network of schools for Jews living in the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa, including Morocco. She invited Braunschvig to Hyde Park, where he spoke to her at length about the problems of Moroccan Jews.2 Cassin may have asked Roosevelt to meet with Braunschvig because he knew of her strong anti-colonialist views and wanted her to be aware of the particular issues faced by Moroccan Jews at a time when Moroccan nationalists were demanding independence. During this period, Roosevelt herself pushed publicly and in correspondence with the State Department for the independence of Morocco and Tunisia from France. France finally granted independence to the two countries in 1956.3
There is no record of Roosevelt taking any action after her conversation with Braunschvig, but her conversation with him gave her an introduction to a situation in which she would become more deeply engaged in 1955 when she and Trude Lash toured the transit camp for Moroccan Jewish children at Cambous, France, and observed Youth Aliyah’s programs for Moroccan children after their arrival in Israel. Polier may have encouraged her to visit the camp in Cambous, although Moshe Kol probably arranged her stop there.4 Managed by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and Youth Aliyah, the camp prepared the children for immigration to Israel. The following year, she became even more involved in the affairs of Moroccan Jews.
As Morocco had moved toward full independence in the winter of 1956, the Jewish community came under pressure to adhere to the nationalistic ideology of the country’s new leaders. The leaders wanted to unify the country and proclaimed that the Jews would be treated as equal citizens. The JDC worried that the progress Jewish organizations had made in providing schooling and social services, such as healthcare, to Moroccan Jews, which the majority of Moslems lacked, would be lost as the nationalist government pursued a policy of “integration.” Moroccan Jewish leaders themselves feared speaking out in their role as Jews, except to support the nationalist agenda. They themselves called for the elimination of separate Jewish organizations, a halt to immigration to Israel, and the merging of Jewish educational and social service programs into programs run by the state for all Moroccans. But integration would eliminate the teaching of Hebrew in school because only Arabic and French were to be taught in the state-run schools. This posed a problem for American and international Jewish organizations attempting to provide aid to Moroccan Jews from outside the country. How, asked Samuel Haber, the JDC’s representative in Morocco, could American or international Jewish organizations “assist a community basically frightened, deeply insecure, but crying hosannahs of a phony integration precipitated, to a considerable extent, by Jews themselves?” International Jewish organizations were also worried that emigration would be cut off. At the time, 80,000 Moroccan Jews had registered to immigrate to Israel and 25,000 had been medically cleared to go. The only obstacle was how rapidly the Jewish Agency could secure transportation.5
In May 1956, after a year in which 42,000 Jews left Morocco to immigrate to Israel, the government of newly independent Morocco ordered Cadima, the local branch of the Jewish Agency, which managed the emigration of Jews, to cease operating and to close its offices by June 20.6 The Moroccan government charged that the Zionists planned to send the Jews to Israel and turn them into soldiers to fight Islam. The Jews, they said, should remain in Morocco. Thousands of Jews, however, had already prepared for their departure by selling their possessions. The government’s decision left them crowded into a camp near Casablanca where they awaited ships to transport them to Israel. The World Jewish Congress (WJC) negotiated an agreement allowing Cadima to continue its work for three more months so it could manage the emigration of the people in the camp, but the chief of Moroccan security, Mohammed Laghzaoui, ordered all the Israeli staff members of Cadima out of the country and issued instructions to border authorities to forbid any Jew from leaving Morocco if they thought the person intended to immigrate to Israel. After the Moroccan Prime Minister, Mbark Bekkay, intervened in response to protests by Jewish leaders, Laghzaoui asked for a detailed plan for managing the exodus of the immigrants in the camp. The Jewish leaders submitted their plan a day later, including a list of the ships that would be ready to take them to Israel, but Laghzaoui still did not issue orders permitting the would-be emigrants to leave. As a result, six to seven thousand men, women, and children occupied the camp in huts designed for eighteen hundred people. They lacked adequate food and sanitary facilities and faced the threat of an epidemic.7
Acting on behalf of the WJC, Justine Polier appealed to Roosevelt to intervene. She sent her a memo describing the situation and emphasizing that the Jews in the camp came from the poorest class of people in Morocco, contributed nothing to the Moroccan economy, and, in fact, constituted a burden to the country.8 Roosevelt agreed to help. Fortuitously, the ambassador from Morocco had recently visited Hyde Park as an emissary of Mohammed V, the sultan of Morocco, to lay a wreath on President Roosevelt’s grave. In speaking to Roosevelt, he conveyed the sultan’s gratitude for FDR’s support of the sultan’s desire for Moroccan independence and the advice FDR had given him during his conference with Winston Churchill in Casablanca in 1943. The president had told the sultan to be sure to protect Morocco’s aquifers when it negotiated concessions with oil companies after the war. The country would need the water, FDR told him, in order to restore depleted soils and return them to productive agriculture. The sultan’s expression of gratitude made it an opportune time for her to communicate with him.9
In the masterly letter Roosevelt sent to Mohammed V; she thanked him for his kind message and told him that her husband wanted very much to improve the standard of living not only in the United States but throughout the world. Drawing on the information provided by Justine Polier, she said she had been told that there were a large number of Jews who had been given permission by the Moroccan government to immigrate to Israel and were in camps awaiting departure, but were now being denied the opportunity to do so. Aware from the information she had received from the WJC that one of the concerns of the Moroccan government was the possible negative effect on the Moroccan economy of a large exodus of Jews, she noted that the Jews in the camp were people who had failed to find a way to adequately support themselves and were, therefore, “of no value to the future development of Morocco.” Perhaps Israel could “help them to develop skills and to improve their lot.” Roosevelt appealed to the values that she was sure the sultan shared with her husband: a commitment to better living conditions for all people and the right of people to emigrate. Transferring these indigent people to Israel would benefit Morocco since it would reduce the number of its citizens living in poverty and “show the world that they did have an interest in helping unfortunate people to improve themselves.”10
Roosevelt’s flattering assertion that the sultan and FDR shared the same goals must have appealed to a leader who had warm memories of the encouragement he had received from the American president. Two weeks after she sent her letter to the sultan, the 6,300 Jews in the camp were finally cleared for departure by Laghzaoui. How much weight Roosevelt’s letter carried with the sultan and the nationalist government of Morocco is unknown, but the timing suggests that it may have played an important role. Despite the persistence of the WJC to implement the agreement they had reached with the Moroccan government in June for the release of the Jews, disagreement within the Moroccan government prevented that from happening until after the sultan received ER’s letter.11 “I am sure your letter helped,” Polier told Roosevelt.12
Eleanor Roosevelt made the most significant of her interventions on behalf of Moroccan Jews during and after her trip to Morocco in 1957 to learn more about the situation facing the country’s sizable Jewish population. She did not hold any government or United Nations position at the time, but during her tenure as a member the American delegation to the UN from 1946 to 1952, she had established herself as an effective international stateswoman. In addition, beginning in 1933, she had developed close ties to American Jewish organizations and, more recently, to Israeli leaders.
In March 1957, on her way to Morocco, Roosevelt lunched in Madrid with Joseph Golan, political secretary to Nahum Goldmann, president of the WJC. Golan had successfully established relationships on behalf of the WJC with the leaders of the nationalist parties in Morocco. As a result, he could provide her with the latest information on political developments in Morocco, particularly the situation of the Jews.13
Roosevelt recorded the details of her visit to Morocco in her widely syndicated daily My Day column. She met with representatives of the JDC, leaders of other organizations providing social and educational services to Moroccans, with various Moroccan government officials, and with Mohammed V, whom she had appealed to the year before. At her request, she also visited some ordinary people in their homes. Moroccan Jews were among the poorest in the world. Drought and the diminishment of their traditional role as traders had driven many rural Jews to the cities, where they lived in shantytowns. Few of them found work there. In Rabat, she visited the home of an unemployed Jewish man who lived with a group of fifteen people who occupied what she described as five “little cubby-holes.” Roosevelt reported in My Day that the diet of the children in the group consisted of mint tea, bread, and once per week a piece of meat. She also met with leaders of organizations working to alleviate these conditions, including a group of Moroccan women who organized educational and health service programs for poor families.14
In Fez, Roosevelt and her companions toured the old Jewish quarter where they visited a school for 2000 boys and girls run by l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, the French Jewish organization that René Cassin and Jules Braunschvig had introduced her to in 1951. She also visited another Alliance school in Demnate. She told an interviewer for The Alliance Review that she was impressed with the teachers and the well-equipped vocational shops in the schools she visited and “noted that the children learn Hebrew and learn to honor the holidays of their faith.” The schools often met needs that the families of the children were unable to meet, sometimes providing them with clothing and the only hot meal of their day and introducing them to good sanitation practices. In the countries where the Alliance ran schools, Roosevelt said, going to school made “the whole difference between a normal productive life and a life of appalling poverty.”15
Thinking strategically, as she often did, Roosevelt viewed the situation in Morocco not only in relation to the needs of the country’s Jewish community, but in the context of the needs of Morocco as a whole and the role Morocco might play in the Cold War.
She drew the following conclusions from her visit:
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While many of the poorest Jews in Morocco wished to leave for Israel, she came to believe it might be best for many Jews, especially the wealthier, to remain in Morocco.
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Morocco faced an imminent famine and required food aid as soon as possible.
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Morocco was in danger of falling under the influence of the Egyptian nationalist leader Gamel Abdel Nasser and through him into closer ties to the Soviet Union. Therefore, America’s goal should be to stabilize Morocco and prevent this from happening.
After returning to New York, Roosevelt addressed a conference of the National Youth Aliyah Committee of Hadassah. She spoke about the severe drought that was destroying the wheat harvest in Morocco, the lack of irrigation in much of the country, and the famine the United Nations Food and Agricultural Commission had warned her would begin within two to three months. She reported that after meeting with the sultan, she was optimistic that Jews who wanted to leave would be gradually allowed to do so, but during her stay she came to believe that a mass exodus of Jews from Morocco would not be beneficial for the country. She thought it best for immigration to happen slowly, not only for Morocco’s sake but for Israel’s, since Israel was already struggling to absorb a flood of immigrants from Europe and Egypt.16
Roosevelt also wrote to Irving Salomon of the American Jewish Committee about the threatened famine. Morocco lacked human and institutional resources to respond to the crisis, she told him. After the French granted independence to Morocco, the French civil servants had left, leaving a vacuum that had been filled with Moroccans without any government experience. She told Salomon that Jews in both the villages and the cities would need food to avert the famine but if food aid were provided only to the Jews, that would create “envy and great difficulty.” In the long run, improving the lot of Moroccan Jews and protecting them from discrimination would require lifting the standard of living not just for them but for all Moroccans.
In addition to the food needed to prevent famine, she told Salomon, the country urgently needed outside development aid, and she feared that if it didn’t get it, Morocco, along with Algeria and Tunisia, could be drawn toward Communism: “I cannot emphasize [enough] the importance, if we are not to lose the chance to keep these three North African countries in the Western orbit, of something being done quickly.”17 As she told Samuel Haber, she believed the three nations could serve as a bulwark against Nasser’s drive to dominate the whole region.
She also informed the AJC after her return to New York about the critical shortage of food in Morocco. Surprisingly, they had not heard about the impending famine until Roosevelt told them.18 After receiving a report she had requested from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization assessing the food shortages, she worked in collaboration with Justine Polier and other Jewish leaders to persuade the American government to provide substantial food aid to Morocco to prevent a famine.19 Having learned that the Moroccan government had submitted a request for aid to the American overseas aid program, she sent the request to her two sons, Congressman James Roosevelt and Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. She told James to pass it on to the chairmen of the House and Senate foreign relations committees. “Whatever is done should be done as quickly as possible,” she told him, “[P]lease don’t let people go to sleep on this material.”20 She also suggested to President Eisenhower that he “spur the proper authorities on a little.” If the United States did not respond quickly, she feared the Soviets would provide aid instead.21 Her efforts and those of the Jewish organizations paid off. By contributing American wheat and other agricultural commodities to the Moroccans, the United States helped prevent a disaster.22
While Roosevelt lobbied Congress and the Eisenhower administration to provide relief to Morocco, she also built on the ties she had established with Moroccan officials during her visit by acting boldly to facilitate a constructive relationship between the JDC and the WJC, on the one hand, and the Moroccan government, on the other. In April 1957, she invited Jewish and Moroccan leaders to meet at her home in New York City. The Jewish leaders were Moses Leavitt, a leader of the JDC; Rabbi Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress; and Justine Polier. The Moroccans were Mehdi Ben Barka, a leader of Istiqlal, the dominant political party in Morocco, who had come to the United States to negotiate the grant-in-aid Morocco had requested from the American government; and the Moroccan ambassador, El-Mehdi Ben Aboud. Leavitt told Barka that the JDC could not provide financial assistance, but it could provide food aid. When Roosevelt emphasized that it would not sit well if during a famine the JDC sent food only to Moroccan Jews, Leavitt assured the Moroccans that in a time of disaster the JDC provided assistance to Jews and non-Jews on an equal basis.23
Despite her efforts, the situation of the more than 200,000 Jews remaining in Morocco continued to deteriorate. In July 1957, Haber reported to the JDC that the famine caused by the drought and the anti-Semitic incidents that had occurred in some of the villages made it urgent to get Jews out of the country. There was “practically no hope for Jewish life in Morocco,” he said, because Jews were “gradually being pushed out of the economic life of the country.”24 The Moroccan government’s idea of integration was simply to shut down the Jewish educational, social service, and welfare programs, resources the other citizens of Morocco lacked. The government argued that the existence of these programs blocked the integration of the Jews with the Muslims. The real reason, Charles Jordan, a member of the JDC administrative committee, said, was to sever the ties of the Jewish community maintained with the outside world through international Jewish organizations.25
In November 1957 the American Jewish Committee received reports that Jews were no longer free to move about within Morocco. The Moroccan police had arrested 239 Jews trying to immigrate to Israel.26 Although Roosevelt had returned from Morocco with the impression that in a year or two “those who really want to go will gradually be allowed to go,” there was no sign that this was going to happen.27
Between 1957 and 1959, very few Jews emigrated from Morocco. In October 1959, Joseph Golan told Roosevelt that the situation of Jews in Morocco had become even more difficult. He shared a letter with her that he had written to Francois Mauriac, the French novelist and human rights activist, about the problem. Golan told Mauriac that at the time of independence the Moroccan leaders had assured the Jews that they would honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But Moroccan leaders did not live up to their promise and Moroccan Jews were being “denied the fundamental liberties.” Most of the Jewish cultural and sports associations were not permitted to carry on their activities; the Jews of the mellahs (the Jewish ghetto) could not leave Morocco nor move within the country, and, in some cases, the Moroccan police had tortured Jews. “We do not know what to do in order to restore confidence and a normal climate among the 200,000 Jews in Morocco,” Golan said.28
Golan also told Roosevelt that postal communication between Morocco and Israel had recently been severed. This move conformed with the Arab League’s policy of boycotting Israel and reflected the degree to which Morocco had been “dragged deeper into the policies of Nasser and the Arab League,” he said. “This hostile act is causing great anxiety among the 110,000 Moroccan Jews [already living] in Israel,” most of whom had relatives in Morocco and were “already alarmed by reports of recent persecutions and arrests of Jews” in their native land. Blocking postal communication “cuts the only link between broken families for whom letters were virtually the only consolation for their separation from one another.”29 This development deeply disturbed Roosevelt. Once again, she wrote to Mohammed V, who now had the title of “King” and whom she had found sympathetic to his Jewish subjects:30
I have been asked to find out whether it would be possible for you to permit an exchange of letters between people who have gone to Israel and their families remaining in Morocco. It seems to be a very great hardship to allow no communication and if it could be permitted at certain stated intervals, I think it would be of great importance to these harassed and troubled people.31
Moroccan policy on postal communication with Israel did not change, however, probably because the pan-Arabists in the Moroccan government supported Nasser’s effort to isolate Israel. The situation of the Jews in Morocco remained precarious and Roosevelt’s Jewish friends continued to turn to her for help. In January 1961, after Golan reported to the WJC that Nasser’s visit to Morocco had provoked “anti-Jewish incidents under police auspices” that ran “into the hundreds,” Justine Polier asked Roosevelt to write once again to the king.32
She told the king that she had heard that there had been several incidents threatening the lives of Moroccan Jews and instilling fear in the Jewish population. She hoped that he would find it possible “to allow greater freedom of exit for the Jews, since this would seem the only way to ease the tensions.”33 It is not clear whether her appeal had any effect on Moroccan policy, but it probably encouraged the king and the crown prince, who would soon succeed him on the throne, to support a more flexible approach to Jewish emigration.
In the summer of 1961, the Moroccan government reached an agreement with emissaries of Israel that, over time, allowed most of the Jews remaining in Morocco to leave the country. Under the agreement, the Jews would officially be allowed to immigrate to the United States and Canada, but not to Israel. The process of organizing the immigration would be entrusted to the HIAS (the Hebrew International Aid Society), an American organization, not to the Jewish Agency. Under this arrangement, 80,000 Jews left Morocco between 1961 and 1966. Ships transported the immigrants from Casablanca to Marseilles or Naples; other ships and planes transported them to Israel. Between 1967 and 1971 another 25,000 left. By the early 1990s, only about 8,000 remained.34
Although Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts on behalf of Moroccan Jews did not always produce the results she hoped for, they demonstrate her close working relationship with American Jewish leaders, her devotion to alleviating the plight of oppressed Jews, and her concern for the welfare of Israel as it struggled to grow in its early years. She wisely assessed the situation of Moroccan Jews in relation to the needs of all Moroccans and Morocco’s role in the struggle of the Arab nations with Israel. The diplomatic skills and stature she had attained as a stateswoman allowed her to lobby effectively upon her return to secure food aid for Morocco and to bring together Moroccan and American Jewish leaders to encourage their cooperation in preventing the impending famine that all Moroccans faced.
1 John F. Sears, PhD, is the author of Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Jewish Plight, and the Founding of Israel (Purdue University Press, 2021). He served as executive director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute from 1986 until 1999 and as associate editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project from 2000–2007. Before joining the Roosevelt Institute, he taught at Tufts, Boston University, and Vassar College.
2 René Cassin to Eleanor Roosevelt (ER), September 11, 1951; ER to Jules Braunschvig, September 24, 1951; Folder: Casa-Cast; Correspondence 1945-1952; Eleanor Roosevelt Papers (ERP); Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (FDRL).
3 Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson (New York: Oxford, 2006), 52, 525. For background on the history of Moroccan Jews, see Michael M. Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1994).
4 For a description of ER’s visit to Cambous, see John F. Sears, Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Jewish Plight, and the Founding of Israel (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2021), 214-16.
5 Report to the JDC on Morocco [unsigned; probably from Samuel Haber], January 22, 1956, 6; “Report by Mr. Samuel Haber” in minutes of JDC Administrative Committee, January 31, 1956; AR 55/64 [45/64#60]: Africa, Morocco, General 1956; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives (JDC Archives).
6 Cadima is sometimes spelled Qadima or Kadima.
7 “Memo on Morocco,” July 26, 1956, 1-3; Folder: Mori-Moro; Correspondence 1953-1956; ERP; FDRL; Charlie [Charles Taylor, presumably] to Moe [Moses Leavitt], June 13, 1956; AR 55/64 [45/64#60]: Africa, Morocco, General 1956; JDC Archives.
8 “Memo on Morocco,” 3.
9 Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor Roosevelt: The Years Alone (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 338.
10 Lash, Eleanor Roosevelt, 339; ER to H.M. The Sultan of Morocco [Mohammed V], July 31, 1956; Folder: Mori-Moro; Correspondence 1953-1956; ERP; FDRL. Moshe Kol also remembered appealing to ER for help in persuading the sultan to allow the Jews to emigrate: Moshe Kol, remarks at Memorial Meeting for Eleanor Roosevelt at the International Cultural Centre for Youth in Jerusalem, November 25, 1962, 2; Folder: ER and Hadassah, Memorials 76-2; Small Collections: Hadassah; ERP; FDRL.
11 Remarks of A.L. Easterman, Director, Political Department, London, August 4, 1959 in Proceedings of the Fourth Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress (Stockholm, 1959); American Jewish Committee, Blaustein Library; 104-05: Accessed January 7, 2024; Lash, Eleanor Roosevelt: The Years Alone, 339; Yigal Bin-Nun, “Psychosis or an Ability to Foresee the Future? The Contribution of World Jewish Organizations to the Establishment of Rights for Jews in Morocco (1955-1961),” Revue Européenne des Études Hébraïques, 10 (2004), especially 41-59. [See my note in email]
12 Polier to ER, September14, 1956; Folder: Polier, Justine Wise; Correspondence 1953-1956; ERP; FDRL.
13 Gerhart Riegner, Never Despair: Sixty Years in the Service of the Jewish People (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 358; Bin-Nun, “Psychosis or an Ability to Foresee the Future?”, 30n5. According to Riegner, who was director of the WJC’s Geneva office at the time, Golan “had to the highest degree the gift of opening doors and establishing human relations under difficult conditions.”
14 My Day, March 29, 1957. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), Accessed January 7, 2024.
15 Interview with ER: “Contribution to North Africa’s Welfare,” The Alliance Review, XII (December 1957); Speech and Article File; ERP; FDRL.
16 ER speech at a conference of the National Youth Aliyah Committee of Hadassah, Waldorf Astoria, NYC, April 3, 1957, 2-3, 6. Folder: 269/YA Conf NY April 1957; RG1, Box 36; Hadassah Archives, Center for Jewish History, NYC.
17 ER to Irving Salomon, April 4, 1957; Folder: Salomon, Irving; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
18 Report by Mr. Leavitt, Minutes, Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the JDC, May 2, 1957, 2-3; AR 55/64 # [45/64 #60] Africa, Morocco, General 1957. JDC Archives.
19 P. Terver, Director, Program and Budgetary Service, Food and Agricultural Organization, to ER, April 10, 1957; Folder: United Nations; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
20 ER to James Roosevelt, April 18, 1957, 3; Folder: Roosevelt, James, 1957-1959; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
21 ER to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, May 14, 1957; Folder: Eisenhower, Dwight D. and Mamie; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
22 American Jewish Year Book, v. 59 (1958), 356-57, Accessed January 15, 2024.
23 Report by Mr. Leavitt, Minutes, Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the JDC, May 2, 1957, 2-3; Moses Leavitt, Memorandum regarding meeting with Moroccan officials at ER’s home, April 24, 1957, 1-2; AR 55/64 # [45/64 #60] Africa, Morocco, General 1957. JDC Archives.
24 Report by Mr. Haber, Minutes, Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the JDC, July 23, 1957, 4; AR 55/64 # [45/64 #60] Africa, Morocco, General 1957. JDC Archives.
25 Report by Charles H. Jordan, Minutes, Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the JDC, December 14, 1957, 2; AR 55/64 # [45/64 #60] Africa, Morocco, General 1957. JDC Archives.
26 “Situation of Jews in Morocco,” Memorandum, Paris Office to Foreign Affairs Department, American Jewish Committee, November 5, 1957, 1; AR 55/64 # [45/64 #60] Africa, Morocco, General 1957. JDC Archives.
27 ER speech at a conference of the National Youth Aliyah Committee, 2.
28 Joe Goulding Golan to Francois Mauriac, October 5, 1959; Golan to ER, October 11, 1959; Folder; Golan, Joe; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
29 Gideon Tadmor to ER October 2, 1959. Folder: Tadmor, Gideon; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
30
ER to Gideon Tadmor, October 9, 1959. Folder: Tadmor, Gideon;
Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
Sultan Mohammed V returned from exile 1955 and became king in 1957.
When he died in 1961, Hassan II became king.
31 ER to Sultan of Morocco, November 11, 1959. Folder: Tadmor, Gideon; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
32 “Report on the Situation of Moroccan Jews,” January 21, 1961. Folder: Golan, Joe; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
33 ER to H.M. King Mohammed V, February 7, 1961. Folder: Moro-Morr; Correspondence 1957-1962; ERP; FDRL.
34 Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century, 237-53.