Avuncular American

My Morocco: Living in a museum in Tangier

President Theodore Roosevelt reacting to the kidnapping of American Ion Perdicaris by Moroccan chieftan Raisuli in Tangier in 1904. Illustration by Lawrence Mynott in Lions at the Legation & Other Tales: Two Centuries of American Diplomatic Life in Tangier, by Gerald Loftus

To help raise funds for the Morocco Library Project, I contributed a chapter to Our Morocco: Moroccans and Expats Share Their Lives, Hopes, Dreams, and Adventures.

Though I'd much prefer that people purchase the book and thereby help fund more English language and public libraries in Morocco, I'll provide you with a couple of excerpts from my humble contribution.  Hey, I'm just thrilled to be in the same book with the likes of Tahir Shah and Alice Morrison!  Excerpts:

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When people imagine an expat’s life in Morocco, what do they see? Luxuriating on beaches or strolling through the souks of Marrakesh. Romantic notions of arabesque refurbished riads abound, designer-perfect and easily available through AirBnB.  But what is life like in America’s only National Historic Landmark located abroad, living upstairs from the museum that is the Tangier American Legation? Let me tell you.

Tangier, where Americans first set foot just after the Revolutionary War, and where we looked out over the flat rooftops of the ancient medina to Spain, as the very modern tankers and container ships plied the Strait of Gibraltar.  But other than Night at the Museum, few people can imagine what it is like to live in the place you work, especially when that place is a museum.  Like Ben Stiller’s museum guard, we too had Teddy Roosevelt to keep us company...

So there it is: “my Morocco” is also the Morocco of the 1830s American Consuls who had to deal with successive sultans’ gifts of Atlas lions destined for the President of the United States; of World War II skullduggery in the Rif mountains by secret agents of the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services (OSS); and of the quasi hippie Peace Corps volunteers in training at the Legation in the seventies, who turned an underground (and dried-up) water reservoir into a disco they named “the Cistern Chapel.”  Living in the present — while imagining life there in the past — was a large part of the pleasure of my years in Tangier.

To really appreciate how unique the Tangier American Legation is, you might start by running that phrase through a search engine. You’ll learn that “legations” have all disappeared, replaced in the 1950s by embassies. All the Morocco tourist guidebooks, from Lonely Planet to the Guide du Routard, sing the praises of the Tangier American Legation museum, but you might need a good map to locate it, hidden as it is just inside the walled, mostly narrow pedestrian streets of the medina of Tangier.

So that’s “our Morocco,” in a nutshell. Like many foreigners, we’re smitten by the warmth and generosity of Moroccans and always feel at home when we return. But we have a few additional friends that no one else can see, and they’re also there to keep us company.

There’s Sidney Paley, the modern-day American pirate, tried at the Legation Consular Court in the early 1950s (he got a reduced sentence and said he’d go back to his original occupation — smuggling).

And then there’s Dean of Dean’s Bar, a wartime man of mystery who’d remind you of “Rick” and his café in Casablanca.  There’s Raisuli, the bandit who kidnapped an American and was played by Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion.

There’s ... you know I could go on forever. “My Morocco” is in the present, and of the past. A bit of real-time traveling, thanks to living in a museum.

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Rives Childs: Remembering the Righteous

This post was originally published in 2011 on the Tangier American Legation blog.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and the Soviet arrest of Raoul Wallenberg, the "Swedish Schindler," I republish three posts on a righteous American diplomat who helped more than a thousand Jews escape the Holocaust.

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Our post on J. Rives Childs, Chargé d'Affaires at the Tangier American Legation during World War II, has elicited a fascinating comment from a friend of his.  We repeat David Meyer's letter below to give it proper attention, as Mr. Meyer begins to answer one of the questions we raised in January: does J. Rives Childs deserve "Righteous" recognition at Yad Vashem for his role in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust?  Mr. Meyer's letter addresses one of the key Yad Vashem criteria: "Righteous" designation is reserved for people who not only saved Jews, but also risked their own lives in doing so.

Images from Toledo sword cane inscribed to J. Rives Childs

TALIM Museum, Tangier American Legation

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"Rives Childs was a close personal friend of mine for many years, from 1971 until his death in 1987. Childs was promoted to the rank of Ambassador soon after the war and was the U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia and then Saudi Arabia in the post-war years that proved pivotal for both the creation of Israel and the resulting conflicts. Childs worked diligently to keep the Arab states, especially the Saudis, from engaging in war with Israel. His rapport with the Saudi King was critical in this regard.

When Senator McCarthy began his campaign alleging that there were Communists in the State Department, Childs had just turned 60 years old and was elgible for retirement. His wife, whom he had married in 1922 in Moscow, was from a formerly prominent, aristocratic Russian family, but had of course had her assets seized by the Bolsheviks. Childs was in Russia at the time, helping Herbert Hoover address the widespread famine that was occuring in Russia, when he met his wife-to-be. Childs told me that he was concerned in the early 1950s that he may become a target of McCarthy, because his wife was Russian. He told me that if he was ever called before the Senate committee, he was prepared to defend himself, in part by reading the letter from Renee Reichmann.

Childs was a native of Virginia, and his family lineage was long and prominent. He told me that he probably could have asked the U.S. Senator Harry Byrd (Virginia) to support him, but he did not want to put his wife through such an ordeal. Consequently, he decided to retire. He lived in Nice, France for the next 20 years (1953-1973) before returning to the United States after his wife's death.

Note also that Childs was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry Truman (*see note at bottom of page) after the war for his contribution to the North African invasion by providing intelligence early and continuously to the Allies before Operation Torch began. At one point, the Nazis had targeted him for assassination. The Allies had discovered this (because they had broken the Nazi's code) but did not tell Childs. For whatever reason, the assassination never occurred. Childs discovered this later after the war.

I have in the past thought, like you, that Childs ought to be considered for recognition for his actions regarding the Hungarian Jews he helped save. He told me that there were other diplomats who said, in essence, "Why bother? You are putting yourself at risk." (Evidently, he WAS at risk, but did not realize how much so until after the war. My hunch is that the Nazis wanted him dead because they suspected him of spying for the Allies more than his actions regarding the Jews in Budapest, but who knows for certain?).

I met Childs in 1971 when I was 19 years old and a freshman at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Childs was a 1912 graduate of Randolph-Macon (subsequently received his M.A. from Harvard) and would regularly visit the school for several months in 1971 and 1972. In my senior year, he left Nice, France and returned to the U.S. permanently.

We maintained a close friendship for the many years following my graduation in 1974 - in fact, he introduced me to a woman who became my wife (we have been married for 31 years). I told him that it was remarkable that he could still at the age of 85 have such a profound influence on people's lives by such simply "match making." He was always a modest person, but he found that humorous whenever I reminded him.

Obviously, he was one of many unsung heroes from that horrible time. While I sometimes wish that these types of persons would be able to live forever, I take solace in the fact that there are children and grandchilden alive today, making contributions to this world in ways we will never fully know, because Rives Childs saved those Budapest Jews from certain death in the concentration camps. I write this narrative on Yom Kippur as a testimony of one person's courage long ago that is an example of Atonement for all of us."

David Meyer

Fairfax, Virginia USA

* Note: James Cockfield, in his book on J. Rives Childs' work in famine relief in post-WW I Russia, says that Childs "was belatedly awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1946 for his work in cryptography" [in World War One].  Obviously, Childs (also a renowned expert on Casanova, and a prolific author) was quite a Renaissance man, in addition to being an unsung hero.

(originally posted October 9, 2011)

Tangier American Diplomat Among the Righteous?

This post was originally published in 2011 on the Tangier American Legation blog.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and the Soviet arrest of Raoul Wallenberg, the "Swedish Schindler," I republish three posts on a righteous American diplomat who helped more than a thousand Jews escape the Holocaust.

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Photo at left: J. Rives Childs, Chargé d'Affaires, American Legation Tangier, February 1941 - June 1945 (from the collection at TALIM).

The following letter is from one of Childs' many books, Vignettes, or Autobiographical Fragments, Vantage Press, 1977.

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                                                                                                Tangier, 13 June 1945

Excellency:

Permit me, before your departure from Tangier, to express to Your Excellency from the bottom of my heart my most profound and everlasting gratitude for your extremely noble and generous assistance in the affair of the entry visas for Tangier for 500 children and adults, for the most part of large families of Hungarian Jews.

 It is without doubt, due to the intervention of Your Excellency that the requests for entry visas were accorded.

The International Red Cross of Budapest, not having received German transit visas for these persons, had, thanks to the entry visas for Tangier, been able to arrange for the departure of this number of Jews from a Nazi concentration camp, place them in safety in a building rented by it which was, in consequence of the authorization of entry visas, protected by the Spanish Consulate in Budapest.

Thus 1200 innocent souls owe their survival to Your Excellency.

I pray God and hope for Your Excellency that benedictions and success accompany all your life each of your steps.

Please accept, Excellency, this testimony of my most profound respect and most distinguished thanks.

                                                                                                Your very devoted,

                                                                                                Renée Reichmann

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Renée Reichmann, when she wrote this letter, was in Tangier representing the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).  The incident is partially described in this 1997 Business Week excerpt from Anthony Bianco's book on the Reichmanns.

J. Rives Childs, in his 1977 book, wrote "All these years... I have carried a copy of Mme. Reichmann's letter in my wallet."  In his autobiography, Let the Credit Go (1983, Frederick Fell Publishers), Childs modestly gave credit for the rescue to Reichmann and to General Luis Orgaz, high commissioner of the Spanish Zone of Morocco, who had ordered the visas issued.

My question is this: shouldn't J. Rives Childs be considered one of The Righteous, and be properly recognized in Yad Vashem?  Childs, in Vignettes, wrote: "I cannot now recall whether, in the hurly-burly of leavetaking of Tangier, I made Mme. Reichmann's letter a matter of official record or ever reported to Washington my unofficial and personal intervention with General Orgaz."  Might there be some mention of this event in Childs' State Department file or at the National Archives?

Childs died on July 15, 1987 at the age of 94, but even posthumous recognition would do him honor.

Next month, it will have been 70 years since Childs took up his post as Chargé at the American Legation, a key post given the events that would unfold here over the next two years, culminating in the first American combat operation in the European theatre of World War II: Operation Torch, the North Africa landings that started to turn the tide on the Western Front.

We knew he was in charge of sensitive diplomatic relations then; we didn't know that he was a hero, a righteous man.

(originally posted January 3, 2011)

Brussels' Jewish Museum

It seemed fitting, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to visit the Jewish Museum of Belgium.  Not quite a year ago, this museum was itself the site of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.

I couldn't help thinking that the victims - an elderly volunteer, the receptionist, and a couple visiting the museum - were like the people there to welcome me to the museum.  A quieter, more peaceful place would be harder to imagine.  Only the Belgian soldiers at the entrance hint at the ongoing need to protect the museum.

Dedicated to recounting the long history of the Jewish presence in Belgium (the timeline on the wall starts in the Middle Ages), the museum provides illustrations of daily life of Jews over the centuries.  Their religious beliefs, related feast days, the economic life of the community.

An exhibit on Jewish bookbinders and other craftsmen leads to a small room on the impact of the Shoah in Belgium.  A poster announcing, just months after the fall of Belgium and France in May/June 1940, the requirement for Jews to register "by order of the military authorities."  The announcement is in French, and there's no need to mention whose order it is.

The displays include the usual documentation of the bureaucracy of extermination - ID cards marked "Juif," ugly antisemitic posters preparing the way for the roundup of Jews - but also heroic stories of Belgians who successfully hid Jewish children during four years of Nazi occupation.  And the stirring account of the Nazi train to Auschwitz where resistance fighters freed Jewish captives.

There's a reminder that "Palestinian" was once a synonym for Jews: a letter from the "Office Palestinien en Suisse," a branch of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland, helping Jews find refuge in British Mandate Palestine from the horrors in Europe.

Elsewhere, a photo from a previous German occupation, that of the First World War.  German soldiers (!) celebrating Yom Kippur in Brussels, 1915.  A reminder that German Jews fought loyally in the German army, a fact which meant nothing to the Nazis a generation later.

And yet another occupation, the "Spanish Netherlands" period of the late 16th to early 18th century.  Jewish "marrano" refugees from the Spanish Inquisition had found refuge in Belgium, and the museum displays a book of the period by a captain in the Spanish army, himself a secret Jew.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium is a low-tech, traditional museum.  It is light years away from the sophistication of, say, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  But because it was the target of terrorism, and because Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe need the support of their host countries at this tense time, it should itself become a place of pilgrimage.  

Can't Stop Curating

New "name cloud" exhibit of Paul Bowles and literary & artistic friends drawn to Tangier

Can't stop curating?

Well, I do have to stop - we're getting on the ferry to Spain Friday morning!  Friends have joked that I'll still be at it tomorrow morning, mounting yet more exhibits while my wife waits in the car.  Not true; I stopped this afternoon.

At the French Consulate's 14 Juillet reception after we arrived in 2010, a Moroccan friend introduced me as the "nouveau conservateur" in what people in Tangier only knew then as the "Musée de l'Ancienne Légation Américaine."  I joked that I was no conservative... I was a Democrat!

But the point is that conservateur or curator was the way people thought of this position in this city.  I thought that was a bit limiting - how about our research library?  Our seminars?  The Arabic literacy program?  Etc.  I also didn't like that ancienne thing - made it sound like we were closed.

Over the past four years, I've waged a branding campaign, using our award-winning logo on business cards and throughout the building, and our no-longer-new appelation of TALIM to convey the message that though we have a museum, we are much more than a museum.  Now, it's quite common to see references to "TALIM" in the press, and it always pleases me to hear us described as an institut.

That said, it has really been fun, that curating stuff.  In 2010, when we mounted what has become one of our biggest attractions, the Paul Bowles Wing, replete with musical soundtrack and illustrated story of Bowles' treks through Morocco for the Library of Congress, someone asked me who had curated the exhibit.  I replied, well, that I had.  That was the first time someone described what I had done as curation.  It felt pretty good.

A couple of years later, when we put on Dorothy Weems' one-woman show of her mother's stories during the Legation's wartime years, the actress referred to me as her "producer," just for organizing the venue and helping her with rehearsals.  Not to worry: I'm not about to embark on a Hollywood career at this stage.  But "producing" what was a very memorable recreation of a special period in the place where it all happened was a joy.  I learned later that it was called, in academic circles, "site-specific performance."  And how.

It's been quite a whirl, these past four years, and Marie Hélène (who has worked tirelessly, helping me in everything I do, plus teaching French in our women's literacy program and helping shepherd the other volunteers) and I wouldn't trade this experience for anything.

So it's not adieu, but only إلـى الـلـقـاء.

Gerald Loftus

A Virtual Tour for Ambassador Peck

TALIM logo and lettering at entrance to museum (installed June 2014)

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Pavilion cedar doors, re-sculpted 2013

This is a "guest post" by Ambassador Edward Peck, who returned to Tangier on May 1 on board a cruise ship, and had been hoping to show Mrs. Peck the place where he and several other future US ambassadors had studied Arabic over fifty years ago.

He found our doors closed.  Disappointment all around - we were so looking forward, as the Pecks were, to a trip down memory lane.  Since the visit unfortunately didn't happen, here's a virtual tour of the Legation in photos (featuring some Legation exhibits that have just been opened), along with Ambassador Peck's narrative of his return to Tangier.

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One of the first six students who attended FSI’s Arabic Language School in the old Legation building when it opened in 1961, I was both pleasantly surprised and extremely impressed by the view of Tangier from the sea as our ship arrived on May Day 2014.

The string of impressive, white high-rises all along the shoreline of the bay, and marching up the hills, were dramatic indications that there have been some very significant changes since I graduated in 1963.

Legation room: more than two centuries of diplomatic history

Although the newer parts of the city look very much like those in other countries, especially in terms of the modern shops, office buildings and condos that line the wide, clean streets, the old city, the medina/casbah, is very much like it was back then.  Using my rusty but still serviceable Arabic as needed, I was able to make my way through the winding, narrow alleys to what is now TALIM, but found it closed for May Day.

 

"Moroccans in America" exhibit, Pavilion staircase, opened June 2014

Director Jerry Loftus and I had been communicating about the visit, and he had left instructions with the guard to be on the lookout for me, but somehow that did not work and I did not get an opportunity to actually see what the inside looks like now.  Photographs are helpful, and I doubt I could find the rooms in which we studied and played ping-pong to relax, but I know it is quite different.

The dining room exhibit of Marguerite McBey's sketchbooks

It was pretty run down when I did the 22-month, 6 hour days, five days per week, and had been empty since the new Consulate General had been built farther up the hill.  An explorer by nature, in an empty cellar room I found three metal boxes containing about forty 78 rpm records from wartime Germany.  They included some heavily propagandist music: "We’re Sailing on England Tonight" and "Deutschland Uber Alles," played by the Hermann Goering Division band; "The Horst Wessel Song," by the Adolf Hitler SS Division band.  There were also many contemporary, folk song and classical records, all in excellent condition.  I donated them to the Library of Congress, since no one in the CG had any idea how the boxes got there.

Exhibit of glass negative images of Tangier International Zone (opened May 2014)

In 2014, I went looking for the little house we had lived in, and found it in a tiny island of similar houses totally surrounded by multi-storey buildings.  It is a pharmacy now, and I imagine that enclave of small homes will soon be a memory.

Legation courtyard: four orange trees in parterres of crushed seashells

What has not changed is the warm and outgoing population.  Moroccans are justifiably known for their open, welcoming and smiling personalities, especially those in Tangier, and it was a pleasure to be among them again.  The visit was brief, but wrapped in reliving very pleasant memories of a time long ago.

Ambassador Edward Peck; photos Gerald Loftus

Introducing the New Mudir - John Davison

Almost four years to the day, I wrote about my predecessor Thor Kuniholm and his long tenure at the Legation.  Next week, it will be my successor, John Davison, who will be coming in after Marie Hélène and I head off to greener pastures.

I was an early and strong supporter of John's candidacy, among a very competitive field of applicants for this job.  He had visited us at the Legation after learning of the job opening, and we were impressed with his enthusiasm, imagination, and his knowledge of Morocco.

John has known Morocco since his days in the 1980s as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and has kept his links - and his knowledge of Moroccan Arabic - alive in the intervening decades, when his diplomatic career took him to other countries in the region (Tunisia, Egypt, Niger) and beyond.

This sentiment of leaving the Legation in good hands has only been reinforced by a period of overlap, where we had plenty of time to discuss the range of activities that is TALIM.  And John was able to witness first hand many of these in a particularly busy May and June, meeting many in our network of supporters in the bargain.  It's been optimum preparation for his taking the helm.

So this is not yet goodbye - we'll save that for the "last post" - but rather Welcome to the New Mudir (Arabic for Director).  I daresay John will fall in love with this venerable building as we have.  As those of us who know it best will appreciate, it deserves all the loving care we can give it.

Gerald Loftus

The Skeletons of Portuguese Tangier

The skeletons of Martin Malcolm Elbl's book are not in any closets, they're the very walls of Tangier's medina, its old walled city which was, for centuries, Tangier itself, before the city dared build outside the fortifications.

"Your library has been randomly selected..." was the explanation on the $0.00 invoice slip that accompanied Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, by Martin Malcolm Elbl of Trent University in Ontario.  This 1,000 page tome is the first volume of a series published by the Baywolf Press for Portuguese Studies Review (PSR).

Here's how PSR describes the book:

The book offers a “virtual archaeology” of the Portuguese urban fabric heritage--both vanished and preserved--in Tangier's médina, the walled Old Town. Solidly grounded in archival sources and profoundly revisionist, Portuguese Tangier alters our image of the médina to an unexpected extent.

"Encyclopedic" is often overused, but in the case of Martin Malcolm Elbl storehouse of knowledge, it is an understatement; Elbl is as at home in Portuguese as in Arabic, as at ease with GIS modeling as he is with Wencelas Hollar engravings of British Tangier.

Oh yes, what is British Tangier doing in a book on the Portuguese era, the mere twenty years which came on the heels of the two long centuries of Portuguese rule?  Elbl says that the British conveniently renamed much of what was in fact Portuguese (our own neighbor, the wonderfully-named "Irish Battery," was originally the Portuguese Cubelo do Bispo).  Same stones, different colonists.

There's much useful background for understanding what Elbl calls the "prehistory" of the Legation's immediate surroundings.  The drouj merican or American steps, built into the medina wall in 1911 to allow more convenient access to the American Legation, had been predated by a Portuguese-era entrance further down what today is, appropriately, Rue du Portugal.

And then there's another long-gone neighbor: "the 'Sultan Steam Mill' (almost back to back with the Legation). This was in the 1880s -- one of the early waves of industrialization at Tangier."  And the nearby "Times of Morocco" offices... we have much to learn from Portuguese Tangier, which is an unexpected but important addition to our research library.

Thank you Martin Malcolm Elbl, the Portuguese Studies Review, Trent University, and the Baywolf Press.  We suspect that the "random selection" had a bit of human agency behind it!

Gerald Loftus

The Coney Island of Culture

For a few hours last Saturday, this venerable institution was transformed for our fundraiser into an auction hall, a Coney Island "lucky dip" (sort of raffle) parlor, and a place where Tangier's multinational blend of friends of the Legation gathered to give us a hand.

Though we didn't match the levels raised in our first foray into fundraising - "Paint the Legation" in 2011 - we nevertheless netted a respectable $7,000 in one evening.  And we all had a great time, giving us a chance to showcase our latest exhibits.

The success of the evening was thanks to a number of people and institutions donating works of art for the auction, prizes for the Lucky Dip, and subsidizing our catering for the evening.  Thanks to all for this help, which included several local volunteers offering their services as gatekeepers, auctioneers, and agents encouraging the donation of art for the highest bidders.

I remember hearing about another American in Morocco, who, as the head of a nonprofit educational institution, was put in the position of a fundraiser.  He likened himself to Morocco's Gnawa musicians, men in brightly colored costumes who play their African-influenced music on the street, twirling their heads and stretching out the cup for a few coins.

So even though I didn't do the actual auctioneering, playing the showman in the cause of our historic preservation efforts is worth it.  They don't teach you how to do this in the Foreign Service, but then again I never learned about running a museum and research center, until I got here four years ago.  Gnawa-like passing the hat is just part of the job.

Gerald Loftus; photo by Jean-Pierre Ayadi

Arabic Literacy and Much More

Hundreds of Tangier medina women have graduated from the literacy program which TALIM does in partnership with FTAM, the Fondation Tanger al-Madina, a Moroccan NGO.  The basis is teaching them to read and write in Arabic, but we also offer cooking, sewing, and foreign language classes, thanks to a number of volunteers from the expatriate community.

Recently we hosted two more events with the women, where their horizons were further widened.  The above photo shows Mitchell Chanelis of Stories Exchange, where, thanks to a hookup organized by Rachid El Mziryahi of the American Language Center, and interpretation provided by two student interns from the Fahd School of Translation, the women were able to converse with American playwright and storytelling coach Robbie McCauley, currently doing a residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Here is a video link to the storytelling session.

"Our women" - we tend to say that in reference to the students in the literacy program - represent rich ground for the storyteller, and Robbie's and Mitch's encouragement elicited a number of touching tales of parental loss, early marriage, divorce... the stuff of life.

One woman, who hesitated because "she didn't have anything interesting to say," turned out to have a fascinating story.  There we were, sitting in a room we've begun to set up as a "community museum" (within our own museum), dedicated to the women's stories of living in the medina.  And the woman who had nothing to say proceeded to show us a photo on our wall which featured her grandfather, who was an official in the employ of the pre-independence Sultan of Morocco!

The women also participated in a presentation by Mohammed Abid, director of research at the Institut Pasteur in Tangier.  Abid had given a presentation on food safety at the AIMS Public Health conference in Tunis in 2011, and this time it was tailored to the concerns of women trying to keep their families safe and healthy.

Abid - who brought along two medical colleagues to form a panel for the questions that followed - was very impressed with the level of awareness of the women.  He wants to return to take up other subjects of interest: diabetes, hypertension, gynecology.  This is really of great benefit to the women, who don't always have the possibility of getting expert advice - for free.

Gerald Loftus