Megilat Hitler (Scroll of Hitler), Prosper Hassine, Casablanca: L'Ideale, 1943

Scroll (6 1/8 x 76 in.; 156 x 1930 mm), printed on 4 paper sheets (19 1/2 in. wide with 5/8 in. overlap where each sheet affixed to the next with paste), on a turned wooden roller. Minor losses, frayed edges and tideline at beginning of scroll, none affecting text; lightly browned; minor creasing where each leaf joined to next. Housed in a marbled-paper cardboard tube; leatherette cap.

Saraf Michal,The Hitler Scroll of North Africa: Moroccan and Tunisian Jewish Literature on the Fall of the Nazis, (Lod: Mekon Habern le-Mehqere Sifrut, 1988).

On November 8, 1942, American and British forces invaded Nazi-occupied Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia and in only eight days defeated the Germans and their Vichy French partners. For the 330,000 Jews of North Africa, the Allied conquest was heaven-sent.  The Vichy regime that had ruled since 1940 had stripped the Jews of their civil rights, severely restricted their entrance to schools and some professions, confiscated Jewish property, and tolerated sporadic pogroms against Jews by local Muslims, and hauled thousands of Jewish men away to forced-labor camps.

The Jewish community of Casablanca, for its part, declared the day of the 1942 Allied liberation “Hitler Purim,” and a local scribe and Hebrew teacher, Prosper Hassine, created the “Megillat Hitler.” Spread over seven chapters, written in the style of Megillat Esther ("Esther Scroll"), it related the events of the Holocaust, from the rise of Hitler to power, through the occupation of Europe and culminating with the murder of the Jews and the plunder of their property. The final three chapters, written after the liberation of Morocco, are dedicated to the history of North African Jewry and their liberation by the Allies. Hassine made use of much of the ancient phrasing straight from Megillat Esther, such as “the month which was turned from sorrow to rejoicing” and “the Jews had light and gladness, joy and honor,” updating it as necessary, such as “ Blessed be Roosevelt and Churchill … Cursed be Hitler and Mussolini.”

The Jews of North Africa had much to celebrate.  But after the festivities died down, questions began to arise. The Allies permitted nearly all the original senior officials of the Vichy regime in North Africa to remain in the new government. The Vichy “Office of Jewish Affairs” continued to operate, as did the forced labor camps in which thousands of Jewish men were being held.

Eventually, under the accumulated weight of public protests, the Roosevelt administration made it clear to the local authorities that the anti-Jewish measures needed to be repealed.

The implementation process, however, was painfully slow.  In April 1943, the forced labor camps in North Africa were officially shut down, although some of them continued operating well into the summer. The Jewish quotas in schools and professions were gradually phased out. Finally, after innumerable half-measures, on October 20, 1943, nearly a year after the Allied liberation, full rights for North Africa’s Jews were at last reinstated. The victory that “Megillat Hitler” celebrated was finally complete.