A Jewish Traveller’s Description of a Moroccan Slave Market

I found this description of an 18th century slave market in Morocco in Samuel Romanelli’s Travail in an Arab Land, trans. and notes by Yedida K. and Norman A. Stillman (Tuscaloosa: University of Arizona Press 1989). Romanelli was an Italian Jew, who found himself stranded in Morocco from 1787 to 1790. His book, originally published in Hebrew, is a detailed description of Morocco, its society and Jewish communities. Romanelli was a highly cultured man, deeply versed in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and Hebrew. He was scathing both of the Arabs and what he considered to be the ignorance and superstition of Morocco’s oppressed Jews. Morocco was the endpoint of a route used by slavers taking enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan west Africa. Unfortunately this slave trade survived into the early 20th century because we disrupted a European blockade of Morocco c. 1909 or thereabouts to prevent the other nations invading. Morocco was kept free, but the consequence was that its indigenous slave trade continued to flourish. Romanelli states

“Twice a week there is an auction called delal … In this type of delal, they also sell black men and women. Slaves and maidservants follow behind the slave driver. The buyer will examine a maidservant as he would examine a sheep. She then becomes his permanent possession. He may either keep her as his slave or be harsh to her and resell her to another. In olden times even whites and Jews were sold, as we know from the story of Joseph and from the Mosaic ordinances.”

In fact Morocco, with Algeria, was one of the centres of the Barbary pirates, which raided Europe and attacked European and American shipping to capture white slaves. This carried on in Algiers until the British launched a reprisal in the 1830s. I’ve put this up because, as western slavery is now again a topic of controversy, political debate and demands for reparations and education, it is important to remember that slavery and the enslavement of Black Africans was not unique to the West.

And it is also disgusting that slavery is returning in the 21st century, as slave markets reopen in Uganda and in the Islamist-held portion of Libya. The last is a consequence of Blair’s overthrow of Colonel Gaddafy, and should count as another reason why the warmonger shouldn’t get a knighthood.

Erich Ohser, the German Comics Creator Who Defied the Nazis

I’ve been flicking through Paul Gravett’s Comics Art (Newhaven: Yale University Press 2013), a history of comics and graphic novels. This views comics as a distinct art form, the way it can promote and challenge stereotypes and the status quo, and the new trends in comics storytelling as it expanded into the digital realm and the emergence of comics that have been specifically designed for museums and art installations. It’s a global history, which not only tells the story of American and European comics, but also covers Japanese comics and those created by members of minorities, such as women, gays and Black and Asian ethnic minorities. Many of the comics discussed are by people, who are unknown to contemporary audience. One of these was Erich Ohser, a Jewish comics creator in Germany, whose family-oriented strip was massively popular from the mid-1930s until the Nazis tried to co-opt it in the 1940s. Gravett writes

On a much more optimistic note, another much-loved German cartoonist in this genre was Erich Ohser who as ‘e.o. plauen’ began in 1934 drawing in crisp brushstrokes his endearing single page vignettes between a father and a son, based on his relationship with his own son. Their first compilation sold 90,000 copies. The Nazis tried to co-opt Ohser’s comics for propaganda purposes, though the Jewish artist refused to incorporate anti-Jewish messages. Arrested by the Gestapo on trumped-up defamation charges and facing deportation to a concentration camp, Ohser took his own life in 1944.

It says much about Ohser’s popularity that the Nazis wanted to co-opt him rather than simply close him down, as they did with other Jewish professionals and businesses. And I have nothing but admiration for him for refusing to collaborate with them to the point where his defiance led to his arrest and tragic end. Lesser men would have given in and gone along with the Nazis’ demands, as so many others did.