In 1885 when the rebel leader Muhammad El-Mahdi seized control of Sudan from its Turko-Egyptian rulers there were a small number of Jewish families living in the country. These people were forceably converted to Islam. These converts later became known as the Masalma. After Anglo-Egyptian rule had been established, they reverted back to Judaism and joined by many more Jewish families.

From 1900 Jews from the Middle East and North Africa settled in Khartoum, Khartoum North, Omdurman and Wad-Medani. Textiles, silk and gum businesses soon began to flourish. By 1926 their small synagogue had been replaced by a  new, self-funded building. At its peak, between 1930 and 1950 the Jewish community in Sudan numbered up to 1000 people.

1956 saw Sudanese independence and the Suez Crisis. Resentment against the Jewish community, which had simmered just below the surface since Israel’s foundation in 1948, began to boil over and Jews were persecuted.  Sudanese newspapers advocated the torture and murder of prominent Jewish people. Young Jewish young men in Khartoum were imprisoned and interrogated for days at a time on bogus charges, or without any reason at all.

After 1967 and the outbreak of the Six Day War, Jewish families left Sudan hastily, often taking only a suitcase and arriving as stateless persons in Israel and Switzerland. One member of the community recalls: “Sudan became bad just before the Six Day War. All you heard on the radio was Nasser whipping and riling everybody up against the Jews.”

In 1975 an air-transfer of some of the human remains from the Jewish Cemetery in Khartoum was organized by several prominent members of the community and reburial was arranged in Jerusalem after reports of desecration and vandalism occurring there. The bodies were moved and reburied at the Givaat Shaoul Cemetery in Jerusalem. In the last year efforts have been made to preserve and clean up the cemetery. The Synagogue was sold and demolished in 1986 and a bank now occupies the site.

In the early 1980s, agents working for Mossad – Israel’s elite intelligence agency – were tasked with smuggling Jewish refugees from Ethiopia to Israel via Sudan. To do so, they set up a luxurious diving resort in Sudan and posed as hotel staff and diving instructors. The agents saw to their guests by day and carried out undercover work at night, which involved picking up refugees in camps in Sudan before bringing them across the Red Sea or airlifting them to Israel. Between 1979 and 1985, the agents managed to save at least 7,000 Jewish refugees.