As part of B’nai Brith Canada’s week-long series to commemorate the nearly 1-million Jews who fled their homes across Arab countries and Iran, we spoke to Noemi Lieberman, originally from Tripoli, Libya.

In 1947, wearing only the clothes on their backs, she and her family were forced to flee Libya, leaving all their possessions behind. To this day, neither she nor any of her family members have been given reparations of any kind.

Libya’s once-thriving Jewish community, which dates back to the third century BCE, once boasted a community of some 60,000 Jews. In 1939, Italy’s fascist regime under Benito Mussolini began to pass antisemitic laws in Libya. Jews were fired from their jobs, dismissed from government schools, and had their passports marked with the words “Jewish race.” In 1942, over 2,000 Jews were deported and sent to work in labour camps. More than one-fifth of them were murdered.