Abolishment of Anti-jewish Laws and Release of 25,000 Refugees Expected in Algeria

It was reported here today that Gen. Henri Giraud, who escaped from a Nazi prison camp and is now in Algeria organizing French forces to fight side-by-side with the American units in North Africa and reorganizing the civil administration there, is expected to re-establish the pro-Vichy French laws and thus free the Jews from the anti-Jewish regulations which the Vichy regime introduced in Algeria, Tunis and Morocco.

About 25,000 Jewish refugees who were sent from France to Algeria for forced labor building the Tran-Saharian railroad in the desert, are also expected to be liberated. The camps in which these refugees are being held are situated in the most tropical section of Algeria, beyond the present scene of operations.

The restoration of the Cremeiux Law, proclaimed in 1870, which gave native Jews in Algeria the same civil and political rights as Frenchmen and which was repealed by the Vichy Government in February, 1942 under a special decree abrogating all special legislation on behalf of Jews in Algeria, is also expected by Algerian Jewish leaders. Under the Vichy decree, Jews in Algeria were forced to establish a Jewish Central Union which every Jew in the country was obliged to join. The Union was under the control of an official of the Vichy Commissariate for Jewish Affairs.

There are now more than 110,000 Jews in Algeria of whom about 30,000 live in Oran, 23,000 in Algiers, and about 15,000 in Constantine. There are also thirty-five districts in the interior which have smaller Jewish populations. The number of Jews in French Morocco is more than 160,000 while in Tunisia there are about 60,000 Jews at present.