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JewishHistoryעברית

Aden riots

Date
2 December 1947 – 6 December 1947Hebrew date: 19th of Kislev, 5708 – 23rd of Kislev, 5708
Location
Aden (Crater and Sheikh Othman)Yemen
Then part of
British Colony of Aden
Perpetrators
  • Arab rioters in Aden (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
75 – 82[2]Jews killed. On 10 December 1947 the British government reported 75 Jews killed as of 6 December. On 11 February 1948 it stated that 82 Jews, 38 Arabs and three others had been killed. Jewish Virtual Library gives 82 Jews, including six unidentified bodies taken to be Jews, and 76 Jews wounded. The JDC Archives likewise record 82 Jewish dead.
Locality

0.94% – 1% of the Jewish population of Aden (Crater and Sheikh Othman)[5]

Country

0.75% – 1% of the Jewish population of British Colony of Aden (c. 1947)[9]

Worldwide

0.00065% – 0.00071% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1948)[16]

Category
Pogrom
Confidence
High

Summary

After the United Nations vote in November 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine, a partial Arab strike in the British Colony of Aden on 2 December turned into attacks on the Jewish quarter in Crater. Rioters looted Jewish shops and burned houses; about 900 Jews were evacuated from Sheikh Othman, and 14 who remained there were killed. Order was restored after naval landing parties and, on 5 December, two companies of the North Staffordshire Regiment arrived from Egypt. Jewish Virtual Library records the destruction of Jewish shops, the two Jewish schools and many houses. The Jewish community of Aden was left without most of its businesses.

Sources

  1. House of Commons (statement by David Rees-Williams), ADEN (DISTURBANCES). Hansard (1947)
  2. House of Commons (statement by David Rees-Williams), Aden (Disturbances). Hansard (1948)
  3. 1947 Aden Riots. Jewish Virtual Library
  4. Finding Aid – Jerusalem – 1944-1952 – Aden. JDC Archives
  5. Overview of the situation of Jews living in Arab countries. CRIF

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,500,000[16]c. 1948DellaPergola's Fundamentals Table 2 gives 11.5 million Jews worldwide in 1948.
  • British Colony of Aden: 8,000 – 10,000[9]c. 1947AJYB 1948–49 Table 3: 8,700 for Aden. JVL Arab-countries table (Roumani): 8,000 for Aden in 1948. AJYB 1950 later lists only about 2,000 resident Jews in Aden plus Yemenite transit camps. Colony of Aden on the eve of the December 1947 riots.
  • Aden (Crater and Sheikh Othman): 8,000[5]Jews in the Aden community in 1948, the year after the 2–6 December 1947 riots. Source 4 says that afterward over 900 Jews already living in Aden joined Yemenite refugees awaiting flights; that is not a census of the community before the riots.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
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  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
  21. Sergio DellaPergola, Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications. American Jewish Year Book 2003, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2003)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
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