In 1962, when the Tunisian civil service began purging its senior ranks of Jewish officials, the Bessis family left Tunisia, moving first to Cameroon where Aldo joined the United Nations agency for food and agriculture (FAO). There Juliette became a Unesco expert and was named professor of history in Yaoundé at the Ecole normale supérieure, which was part of the French university system. In 1964, the family moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a few months before Aldo Bessis was reassigned to FAO headquarters in Rome.