The 1945 Tripolitania Pogrom, Five Days of Violence Against Libyan Jews

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

A pogrom against the Jewish communities of Tripolitania, the western region of British-administered Libya, began in Tripoli on November 5, 1945 and spread over several days to nearby towns including Amrus, Zanzur, Tajura, Zawia and Qusabat. Arab mobs burned and looted synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses and killed Jewish residents across these towns; almost every synagogue in the affected towns was damaged or destroyed. The British military administration, which had governed Libya since Italy's 1943 defeat in North Africa, was slow to intervene and was later criticized for the delay.

Around four thousand Jews were left homeless and some twenty four hundred reduced to poverty across the affected towns. The pogrom is widely read as the opening blow in the decline of Libyan Jewry, followed by further anti-Jewish violence in 1948 and again after Libyan independence and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, ending in the near total emigration of the community by the early 1970s.