The French and British governments declared war on Germany in September 1939 in response to the implementation of a German-Soviet agreement to partition Poland. It was not immediately clear to the inhabitants of Paris and London what war with Germany would involve, but for Jean Weidt, and for thousands of others who had moved to France or Britain as refugees from political and / or race based persecution in Nazi Germany, the period of waiting was relatively short. Weidt was identified as an enemy alien, facing arrest and internment. He was able to avoid arrest in Paris by escaping to (French) North Africa and ended up in Casablanca, but after the invasion of May 1940 and the installation of a new government in France, Casablanca came under the control of the Vichy government, and Weidt spent several months in a concentration camp in Algeria. Later on, when a new camp commander took over, he was on at least one occasion let out and permitted to dance for soldiers at the Algiers Opera House.