In total, 25 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered; and another 26 were wounded. Additionally, more than 200 Jewish shops were looted and destroyed. Synagogues and homes were ransacked.
The violence spilled into Algeria’s countryside for 100 kilometers. Jews were killed in Hamma and Mila. In Ain Beida, 314 Jews packed up and left for good.
Meanwhile, the French police stood by and watched it all happen.
The trigger was supposedly a street argument. But the real causes ran deeper: centuries of Jews living as second-class dhimmis under Muslim rule, anger over the Crémieux Decree that made Algerian Jews French citizens, and open antisemitism that was always present.
Jews had lived in Algeria for 2,700 years, long before Islam. After independence in 1962, the new “Muslim Algeria” had no place for Jews. By the 2010s the last remaining Jews were gone. A community of 130,000 was erased.
The Constantine pogrom was one chapter in the story of Jews living as a minority in Muslim-controlled lands. Until suddenly, all the Jews were gone.
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