The Italian 10th Army had been routed by the British Commonwealth Western Desert Force in Operation Compass (9 December 1940 – 9 February 1941) and captured at the Battle of Beda Fomm.

[4] After the German and Italian defeat in the Second Battle of El Alamein and the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch), the OKW once more upgraded the presence in Africa by adding first the XC Army Corps, under Walter Nehring, in Tunisia on 19 November 1942, then an additional 5th Panzer Army on 8 December, under the command of Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim.

[9] However, Jewish people suffered during the fascist regime laws, and the local administration took part in the Holocaust deporting some thousands of Jews to Italy, under the supervision of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, Wehrmacht commander of the Axis in the Mediterranean theater.

Robert Satloff described in his book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands that as the German and Italian forces retreated across Libya towards Tunisia, the Jewish population became victims upon which they released their anger and frustration.

[10] According to Maurice Remy, although there were antisemitic individuals in the Afrika Korps, actual cases of abuse are not known, even against the Jewish soldiers of the Eighth Army.

Remy quotes Isaac Levy, the Senior Jewish Chaplain of the Eighth Army, as saying that he had never seen "any sign or hint that the soldiers [of the Afrika Korps] are antisemitic.

"[11] The Telegraph comments: "Accounts suggest that it was not Field Marshal Erwin Rommel but the ruthless SS-Standartenführer Walter Rauff who stripped Tunisian Jews of their wealth.

"[12] Giordana Terracina writes that: "On April 3, the Italians recaptured Benghazi and a few months later the Afrika Korps led by Rommel was sent to Libya and began the deportation of the Jews of Cyrenaica in the concentration camp of Giado and other smaller towns in Tripolitania.

"[15] According to Maurice Roumani, "Libyan Jews noted that in daily matters, the Germans largely acted out of pragmatic economic interest rather than adopting the political and ideological practices known elsewhere.