The Mellah of Fez, a living symbol of Morocco’s Jewish heritage

Like all the neighbourhoods that once belonged to the Jewish community, it now bears witness to a thousand-year-old coexistence between Jews and Muslims, which came to a screeching halt in the middle of the 20th century.

During the Second World War, under the French protectorate and therefore subject to the laws of Vichy, King Mohamed V refused to allow Moroccans of the Jewish faith to be deported to collaborationist France.

Despite this, as a reaction to regular persecution and poverty, a flow of emigration gradually began around 1950 to Latin America, the United States, Canada and France, before turning into a mass exodus to the newly-created State of Israel.