French Cultural Icon Urges Macron to Honor Moroccan King as ’Righteous Among Nations’ for WWII Jewish Protection

"Let me hope at this moment that one of the strong personalities of the Arab world who has marked his permanent will for respect of all religions, I think of King Mohammed V, will finally be recognized as ’Righteous Among the Nations’. As we know, he protected the Moroccan Jews against the Vichy regime [...] Nothing like the way the Jews of Algeria were tortured, imprisoned, mistreated, relegated by the abrogation of the Crémieux decree," affirmed Jack Lang, in front of President Macron and many other personalities from the political, cultural world and representatives of the three monotheistic religions.

The President of the IMA declared to the MAP, as part of this exhibition, that he would write to the authorities of Yad Vashem (International Institute for Holocaust Remembrance), to ask them that "the Sultan of Morocco Mohammed V be proclaimed Righteous Among the Nations, because of the protection he granted to the Jews of Morocco in the face of the Vichy authorities".

For Jack Lang, it is "to show that between the Jewish and Muslim cultures there is now a kind of harmony that is being built". He insists that Morocco remains a land of inter-religious tolerance, peace, understanding and living together. He took the opportunity to pay a strong tribute to King Mohammed VI who continued in the same logic by carrying out various actions for the well-being of the Jewish community. Among other things, he cited the consecration of the Hebrew component in the preamble of the Moroccan Constitution, the restoration of Jewish sites in Morocco and the integration of the teaching of Moroccan Judaism in school textbooks.

The exhibition open to the public on Wednesday will continue until March 13, 2022, and is part of the continuation of the exhibitions "Hajj, the Pilgrimage to Mecca" in 2014 and "Christians of the East, 2000 Years of History" in 2017, a trilogy dedicated to the monotheistic religions in the Arab world.

The event was able to become a reality thanks to loans of works from public and private international collections (France, England, Morocco, Israel, United States, Spain). There will also be colloquiums, conferences and music concerts to highlight this shared heritage.