To My Tunisian Friends

Jacques Lazarus was born in Payerne, Switzerland, to Alsatian-Jewish parents. A career officer in the French army, he was forced out by the Vichy’s antisemitic Jewish Statute in 1940. In 1943, he became a leader in the Armée Juive (Jewish Army) French Resistance. Betrayed, arrested, and interned in Paris’s Drancy camp, on August 17, 1944, he was shipped out on the last train to Auschwitz. Four days later, with twenty-seven others, he escaped by jumping from the train, an experience chronicled in Juifs au combat. After the war, he became head of the World Jewish Congress for Africa and director of the Comité juif algérien d’études sociales (Jewish Algerian Committee for Social Studies). He also founded and edited Information juive in Algeria, a monthly publication devoted to Israel, Zionism, Judaism, French and Algerian nationalisms, and related matters.