Editing Sephardic Jews (section)

=== The Holocaust ===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-179-1575-08, Ioannina, Deportation von Juden.jpg|thumb|left|A young woman weeps during the deportation of Jews of [[Ioannina]]  (Greece) on 25 March 1944.|alt=]]

The [[Holocaust]] that devastated European Jewry and virtually destroyed its centuries-old culture also wiped out the great European population centers of Sephardic Jewry and led to the almost complete destruction of its unique language and traditions. Sephardi Jewish communities from France and the Netherlands in the northwest to Yugoslavia and Greece in the southeast almost disappeared.

On the eve of World War II, the European Sephardi community was concentrated in Southeastern Europe countries of [[Kingdom of Greece|Greece]], [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], and [[Kingdom of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]]. Its leading centers were in [[Salonika]], [[Sarajevo]], [[Belgrade]], and [[Sofia]]. The experience of Jewish communities in those countries during the war varied greatly and depended on the type of regime under which they fell.

The Jewish communities of Yugoslavia and northern Greece, including the 50,000 Jews of Salonika, fell under direct [[Axis occupation of Greece|German occupation in April 1941]] and bore the full weight and intensity of Nazi repressive measures from dispossession, humiliation, and forced labor to hostage-taking, and finally deportation to the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]] and extermination.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sephardi Jews during the Holocaust |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006079 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170710020017/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006079 |archive-date=10 July 2017 |access-date=2017-08-22 |website=www.ushmm.org |language=en}}</ref>

The Jewish population of southern Greece fell under the jurisdiction of the [[Kingdom of Italy|Italians]] who eschewed the enactment of anti-Jewish legislation and resisted whenever possible German efforts to transfer them to occupied Poland, until the surrender of Italy on 8 September 1943 brought the Jews under German control.

Sephardi Jews in Bosnia and Croatia were ruled by a German-created [[Independent State of Croatia]] state from April 1941, which subjected them to pogrom-like actions before herding them into local camps where they were murdered side by side with Serbs and Roma (see [[Porajmos]]). The Jews of Macedonia and Thrace were controlled by Bulgarian occupation forces, which after rendering them stateless, rounded them up and turned them over to the Germans for deportation.

Finally, the Jews of Bulgaria proper were under the rule of a Nazi ally that subjected them to ruinous anti-Jewish legislation, but ultimately yielded to pressure from Bulgarian parliamentarians, clerics, and intellectuals not to deport them. More than 50,000 [[Bulgarian Jews]] were thus saved.

The Jews in North Africa identified themselves only as Jews or European Jews, having been westernized by French and Italian colonization. During World War II and until [[Operation Torch]], the Jews of [[French protectorate in Morocco|Morocco]], [[French Algeria|Algeria]], and [[French protectorate of Tunisia|Tunesia]], governed by pro-Nazi [[Vichy France]], suffered the same antisemitic legislation that Jews suffered in France mainland. They did not, however, directly suffer the more extreme Nazi Germany antisemitic policies, and nor did the Jews in [[Italian Libya]]. The Jewish communities in those European North Africa countries, in Bulgaria, and in Denmark were the only ones who were spared the mass deportation and mass murder that afflicted other Jewish communities. [[Operation Torch]] therefore saved more than 400,000 Jews in European North Africa.