History of the Jews in Eritrea

Eritrea once had a small community of Yemenite Jews who arrived in the country after having been attracted by new commercial opportunities driven by Italian colonial expansion in the late 19th century.

In the 1930s, the Jewish community was bolstered when many European Jews emigrated to Eritrea to escape Nazi persecution in Europe.

[1] Among those imprisoned were future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir[2] and Haim Corfu, a founder of Beitar Jerusalem.

There was only one last native Jew left in Eritrea, Samuel Cohen, who ran an import-export business and attends to the Asmara Synagogue.

Despite this, the government never restricted Jewish freedom to worship, and the country has no history of any persecution of Jews.