Paul Sebag

Paul Sebag (Tunisian Arabic: پول صباغ) (26 September 1919 – 5 September 2004) was a French-Tunisian sociologist and historian.

Biography
After having begun studies in law and philosophy in Paris interrupted by World War II and the anti-Jewish laws of the Vichy regime, Paul Sebag in Tunisia took an important part in the action of the Tunisian Communist Party (PCT) against the partisans of Vichy. Arrested and tortured, he is sentenced by a Bizerte court for life. However, he spent only ten months in prison. Released in the aftermath of the allies' landings in North Africa on 8 November 1942, he resumed his political activity in the PCT illegally.

In 1943, after the Liberation, he became a journalist and edited the party newspaper. He then completed his studies and became, from 1947 to 1957, professor of letters at Lycée Carnot in Tunis. He also published several studies in urban sociology that led him to teach at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Tunis and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis. In 1977, due to the non-renewal of his contract by the Tunisian authorities, he obtained a job at the University of Rouen, where he worked for two years before claiming his pension rights. He devoted himself to his work as a historian and publishes various books devoted in particular to the history of Tunis and that of the Tunisian Jews.

In 1994, he was awarded the Tunisian Order of Cultural Merit.

A volume of posthumous homages is published in his honor in 2008.