Tales of Junk Demography: How Sanning Invented 100,000 European Jews in Morocco

In Chapter Seven dealing with post-war Jewish migration, Sanning tries to convince his readers that part of the Oriental Jews who came to Israel during the first two decades after its declaration of independence were, in fact, European Jews. Among them, allegedly 100,000 out of 252,642 Moroccan olims.

To support his assertion, he cited the results of 1936 French Moroccan census, which found 161,000 Jews, then implied a natural increase of 1 percent per a year and stated Moroccan Jewish population was 50,000 in 1970. This would allow the native Moroccan Jewish community to give Israel only 150,000 new souls, by 100,000 less than actually arrived. The self-appointed revisionist demographer concluded the only explanation is the mass resettlement of 100,000 European Jews in Moroccan territory during the war or shortly after (Walter Sanning, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, p. 164).

Note: In the case of France, Sanning assumed totally 170,000 North African Jewish newcomers, 110,000 from Algeria and 60,000 from Tunisia (ibid., p. 169).

Sanning's calculation is, of course, wrong.

The results of the 1936 census can't be considered complete, as Robert Attal wrote in 1963:

"We have to note, however, that in Morocco, only the results of 1947 and later years are of use, the data from the censuses of earlier years being incomplete because of the imperfect control exercised over certain regions and because of other technical reasons; the census enumerators could not without risk make individual contact with the population of insubordinate areas, and the administration had to content itself with estimates of Muslim and Jewish populations."

(Robert Attal, 'The Statistics of North African Jewry', in: Morris Ginsberg (ed.), The Jewish Journal of Sociology, 1963, Vol. 5, p. 29)

The 1947 census counted 203,839 Jews of Moroccan nationality (Ibid., p. 34).

Both the 1936 and the 1947 census still didn't cover Spanish Morocco and Tangier, where 28,762 Jews lived in 1945, fewer than 3,000 of them were wartime refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. 

A natural increase of 1 percent per a year in the time period in question is crudely underestimated. With median age of 18 years in 1960, Moroccan Jews were demographically like the general population  (Usiel Oskar Schmelz, Jewish Population Studies, 1961-1968, p. 39; Victor Malka, 'Morocco', in: American Jewish Year Book, 1963, Vol. 64, p. 400). Annual natural increase of Moroccan population ranged between 2.5 and 3 percent in the 1950s and 1960s (Koenraad Matthijs, Population Change in Europe, the Middle-East and North Africa, p. 129).

The Moroccan Jewish population decreased from 230,000 in 1947 to 160,000 according to the 1960 census (the first one conducted in unified Morocco). By 1971, the Moroccan Jewish population shrank from 160,000 to around 35,000 (Leon Shapiro, 'World Jewish Population', in: American Jewish Year Book, 1972, Vol. 73, p. 599). With an annual natural increase of 2.5 percent, a total excess of births over deaths of 63,500 over 1947-1960 seems to be reasonable. After 1960, the continuing outflow of Jews from Morocco surely caused significant drop of birth rate, because a disproportionaly higher percentage of those who stayed behind were people over the age of 40 (Attal, 'The Statistics of North African Jewry', p. 31). Still, even an average annual natural increase of only 1.25 percent in 1961-1971 would lead to a total excess of births over deaths 12,000.

According to Statistical Abstract of Israel 2013 (Table 4.4), a total of 254,715 Moroccan Jews - explicitly Moroccan-born (!) - relocated to Israel in 1948-1971. Several thousands later returned. Between 1948 and 1967 over 6,000 Jews left Israel for Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (Ori Yehudai, Leaving Zion, p. 19).

A certain number of Moroccan Jews settled in Spain (specifically from former Spanish Morocco), where Jewish population, amounting to 6,000 after the Spanish Civil War, reached 10,000 in 1973, including the enclaves of Ceunta and Melilla (Abraham S. Karlikow, 'Spain', in: American Jewish Year Book, 1973, Vol. 74, p. 425). The United States in 1962-1968 admitted 4,100 North African Jews, mostly from Egypt, but aswell some from Morocco (Jack J. Diamond, 'Jewish Immigration to the United States', in: American Jewish Year Book, 1966, Vol. 67, p. 92; Jack J. Diamond, 'Jewish immigration to the United States', in: American Jewish Year Book, 1969, Vol. 70, p. 289). Between 1960 and 2011 about 8,600 Jews moved from Morocco to Canada.

In summary, taking into account population 230,000 in 1947, remaining Moroccan Jewish population 35,000 in 1971, total excess of births over deaths at least 75,500 and several thousands returnees, not less than 275,000 Moroccan Jews departed from Morocco in 1948-1971 - by 20,000 more than Moroccan Jews who made Aliyah to Israel - without any influx of European Jews claimed by Sanning.