Following the Holocaust in Europe, the decolonization of Africa, and the rise of Arab nationalism and religious anti-Judaism, there was a substantial wave of Jewish emigration from Morocco to North America, Europe, and Israel. The Six-Day War, the Cold War, and the Yom Kippur War are some of the important events that marked the subsequent years. It is this time interval—the 1950s to 1970s—which constituted the bulk of Jewish immigration to the places mentioned above from Morocco and Turkey. How do those Jews remember life back then and inform different majority-minority relations in Morocco and Turkey? Turkey’s Ottoman history and its majority-minority relations put the country in a unique position compared to the colonial history of Morocco and its relation to its minorities. In 1956, Morocco declared its independence that ended French colonialism, and led to the increase of Arab nationalism in the region. Turkey became an independent state after the collapse of the Ottoman empire in the early 20s long before Morocco. Linguistic assimilation was the policy expected by the Turkish state for equal citizenship of its minorities. Not only Jews but also other minorities including Armenians, Kurdish, Greek, or Circassian had to abandon their language in favor of Turkish. In this presentation, I aim to look at the impact of Arab and Turkish nationalism on the participants through memory. Based on the oral history method, it focuses on 15 individuals from immigrant backgrounds who now reside in Canada. The comparison of their memories allows for an in-depth examination of the complexity of their experiences in two countries before immigration. My paper thus argues that while Moroccan Jews share their stories concerning Arab nationalism and Moroccan colonial history, Turkish Jewish narratives regarding Turkish nationalism remain less salient allowing for a rethinking of state formations of the two countries from the point of the interviewees.