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JewishHistoryעברית

Tripoli pogrom of 1945

Date
c. 5 November 1945 – 7 November 1945Hebrew date: 29th of Cheshvan, 5706 – 2nd of Kislev, 5706
Location
Tripoli and TripolitaniaLibya
Then part of
British Military Administration of Libya
Perpetrators
  • Muslim rioters in Tripolitania (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
120 – 140[1]Jews killed. Yad Vashem gives 120 murdered in a three-day pogrom in Tripoli. A JTA report of the British investigation gives 125 Jews and five Arabs killed in Tripolitania. Jewish Virtual Library gives more than 140 Jews killed.
Locality

0.43% – 0.5% of the Jewish population of Tripoli and Tripolitania[4]

Country

0.4% – 0.54% of the Jewish population of British Military Administration of Libya (c. 1939)[57]

Worldwide

0.0011% – 0.0013% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1945)[5]

Category
Pogrom
Confidence
DisputedDeath tolls in the fetched sources range from 120 (Yad Vashem) to 125 (British investigation via JTA) to more than 140 (JVL). The exact calendar start within November 1945 is given as 5 November only by JVL.

Summary

In November 1945, after the wartime racial laws had been repealed, Muslim rioters carried out a three-day pogrom against Jews in Tripoli and Tripolitania under British military administration. Yad Vashem records 120 Jews murdered, hundreds wounded, at least five synagogues destroyed, and hundreds of homes and businesses ruined. A British investigation reported by JTA in December gave 125 Jews and five Arabs killed and pointed to possible organization under the influence of agitators from Egypt. Jewish Virtual Library dates the outbreak to 5 November and gives more than 140 Jews killed.

Sources

  1. Sheryl Silver Ochayon, The Jews of Libya. Yad Vashem
  2. Special Report Reveals 125 Jews, Five Arabs Killed During Pogrom in Tripolitania. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (1945)
  3. Jews in Islamic Countries: Libya. Jewish Virtual Library
  4. Jewish Communities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica Come to Life Under British. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (1943)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,000,000[5]c. 1945DellaPergola's core estimate for 1 May 1945, matching the 11 million figure he and the 1948–49 Year Book use for the immediate postwar world total.
  • British Military Administration of Libya: 26,000 – 30,046[57]c. 1939AJYB 1946–47: 26,000 Jews in Libya for 1939 and 1945. AJYB 1940–41: 30,046 (1938 mark in Africa table). Pre-war / wartime Italian Libya figures used as baseline before and during British military administration.
  • Tripoli and Tripolitania: 28,000[4]About 28,000 Jews in Tripolitania, of whom about 20,000 lived in Tripoli, as reported in October 1943, two years before the November 1945 pogrom. The figure is for the province the attacks covered, not for Libya as a whole.

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)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  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)
  13. Joseph Jacobs, Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  19. Игорь Виленский, Оценка сокращения численности еврейского населения Российской Империи и СССР (1897–1926). Еврейская Старина (2024)
  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)
  22. Population of Israel/Palestine by Religion (1553–Present). Jewish Virtual Library (citing CBS, British Mandate publications, Bachi and others)
  23. US Jewish Population Pocket Demographics 2.0. Berman Jewish DataBank / Jewish Federations of North America (2018)
  24. H. S. Linfield, The Jews of the United States: Preliminary Figures for 1937 (Linfield) / Statistics of Jews. American Jewish Year Book 1939–40, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1939)
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  31. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Appendix A: Sources and Methodology for Section 2 (Jewish and total population in Germany-Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Authors' appendix PDF (citing Weinryb, Stampfer, Kupovetsky, Guggenheim, Toch, Battenberg, Israel) (2018)
  32. Kirsten E. Schulze, The Jews of Lebanon between Coexistence and Conflict. Internet Archive full text
  33. Jews in Arab Countries. American Jewish Year Book excerpt, Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1978)
  34. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, The Farhud. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  35. Joseph Rothschild (tabulated), Interwar East European Census Data. Lawrence University course materials
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  37. Davis Trietsch, Die Juden der Türkei. Länder und Völker der Türkei, Heft 8 (Leipzig) (1915)
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  41. Yitzhak Arad, “Operation Reinhard” | Death Camps of Belzec, Sobibor & Treblinka. Yad Vashem
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  50. Greece. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  52. German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  53. Statistics of Jews (World and US Jewish Population). American Jewish Year Book 1946–1947, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1947)
  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  56. Jewish Populations in the Arab World. Jewish Virtual Library (citing Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2021 / AJYB 2023)
  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
  63. Argentina Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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