This paper examines the relationship between anti-Semitic policies in Vichy administered Morocco (1940-1942), post-war Moroccan Jewish political affiliations and the establishment of the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) in 1943. Scholars have traditionally noted that Maghrebi Jews became disillusioned with assimilation according to the colonial Gallic ideal marketed to Jews as a direct result of discriminatory Ghettoization policies experienced during the two years of Vichy rule in Morocco. Less explored are Morocco’s Vichy forced labor camps as a nexus of political and social interaction between European and Moroccan Jews that fostered a sense of “supra-national” Jewish belonging, contemporaneous with intensifying Jewish anti-colonial Moroccan nationalist sentiment. It was in this context that Leon Sultan, an Algerian Jewish lawyer working in Casablanca, came to found the PCM in 1943. This paper traces Jewish political attitudes and affiliations, particularly within the Communist party, in Morocco during the Second World War as well as the consequences of these developments for post-war anti-colonial agitation and migration. While Communist activity was legally banned in Vichy Morocco, ideological and political ferment continued underground, informed by interactions with European Jews as well as political dissidents from France and Spain. Based on an examination of contemporary newspapers, political ephemera and oral histories this paper argues that although brief, Vichy rule in Morocco dramatically accelerated pre-existing political and social schisms among Moroccan Jews as well as between Moroccan Jews and Muslims. At the same time, this period proved crucial to the development of the PCM as a force for Moroccan independence and Jewish participation therein. This paper first describes Moroccan Jewish political life in the late 1930s, including a discussion of the state of Zionism, “Allianciste” (Alliance Israelite Universelle) political tendencies and Jews in the Left. From here, it addresses France’s loss to Germany in the fall of 1940, the extension of Vichy rule in North Africa and the effects of these events on Moroccan Jews. This section treats anti-Semitic legislation, forced labor camps primarily founded to incarcerate political prisoners as well as the slow liberation of these camps after the war’s conclusion with the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) as well as the Quaker American organization, the American Friends Service Committee. The paper concludes with the state of the post-war Moroccan nationalist movement, the foundation of the PCM and an analysis of the effects of the war on Jewish social and political life.