Iraq’s Jewish community was one of the oldest in Jewish history, dating back to the 6th century BCE, hundreds of years before the Muslims established a presence in Iraq. Known as Bavel, it produced the Babylonian Talmud and was the spiritual center for Jews from around the world. From Baghdad to Basra, Jewish communities flourished, synagogues thrived, and businesses prospered.
Iraqi Jews, who were an integral part of the country’s culture, language, and history, were also at the forefront of Iraqi progress to modernity. The Jewish community had several representatives in the Parliament and one member in the Senate. The community’s elite included high-ranking officials, prominent attorneys and dignitaries, and wealthy merchants.
In the 1940s, about 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq (nearly three percent of the total population), with about 90,000 in Baghdad, 10,000 in Basra, and the remainder scattered throughout many small towns and villages.
The state of Iraq, established by British Mandatory authority in 1921, was in peril in the spring of 1941 when all British territory was severely threatened by Nazi advances. Even the homeland was subjected to constant bombing during the Blitz, and German submarines were crippling shipping. The German Afrika Korps under Rommel drove the British out of Libya and were now poised to attack the Suez Canal in Egypt. The British Army had retreated from Greece and Crete, eliminating their last beachhead on continental Europe.
The rise to power of a pro-Nazi government in Iraq instigated one more body-blow for His Majesty’s Government and would unleash an unprecedented chain of events for the Jewish community in the country. Another instance where the lethal connection between the Nazis and the other equally determined enemy of the Jews, Haj Amin al-Husseini, would spell catastrophe.
In the wake of the setbacks for the British, Rashid Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq on April 2, 1941. He was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the man who had been at the forefront of anti-British activity and the co-Nazi instigator to rid the world of Jews, the former mufti of Jerusalem (who had been expelled by the British after leading the Arab Revolt), Al-Husseini.
These anti-British forces formed a pro-German government, winning the support of the Iraqi Army and administration. They had hoped that an Axis victory in the war would facilitate independence for Iraq.
The rise of this pro-German government threatened the Jews in Iraq. Nazi influence and antisemitism were already widespread due in large measure to influential Nazi propaganda, which included Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin. Mein Kampf had been translated into Arabic and was published in a local newspaper.
The British feared that Iraq, as a pro-Axis bridgehead in the Middle East, would inspire other Arab nations to revolt, which would jeopardize their access to oil supplies. Their communications and transportation routes to India were also now seriously threatened, so the British decided to occupy the country. By the end of May 1941, the Iraqi regime collapsed, and its leaders fled to German-occupied Europe.
Because the British did not wish to appear to be intervening in Iraq’s internal affairs, the military did not enter the cities. The result was that there was widespread looting of shops, many of which were owned by Jews. But as the British were now in charge, the Jews innocently believed that the danger from the pro-Nazi regime had passed.
This presumption enabled the Jews who had gone into hiding to venture outdoors to celebrate Shavuos. It was a fatal error.
Seeing so many Jews was too much for the Iraqis and the nearby Bedouins who had been poisoned by the Nazis and Al-Husseini, and riots broke out known as the Farhud (Arabic for pogrom). For two days, starting on June 1, 1941, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. Community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families – 15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad – suffered directly from the pogrom, which was a turning point in the history of the Jews of Iraq.
Baghdad’s Jewish community was unarmed and lacked self-defense skills. They felt vulnerable and helpless and were desirous to finally leave Iraq. Hundreds fled to Iran, others to Beirut, and some even obtained temporary visas for India. A few hundred Jews tried to reach Palestine, but did not get past either the Iraqi police who forbade emigration to Palestine, or the Palestinian police who enforced the White Paper which did not allow for Jewish immigration.
After the Farhud, Iraqi Jewry understood that Jewish lives were threatened in the Middle East as much as they were in Europe. They wanted out and the Jewish leadership in Palestine wanted them in – but first Israel would have to become a state. By 1951, ten years after the Farhud, most of the Iraqi Jewish community (about 124,000 Jews out of 135,000) had immigrated to the State of Israel.
The Farhud was a prelude for what loomed for Jewish communities in all Arab lands. Most of the Jews in Arab countries were forced to flee their homes and run for their lives. A total of 850,000 Jewish refugees were created that the world, and certainly the U.N., never talk about.
Millennia of coexistence had been ruptured, and where once large and vibrant Jewish communities existed, only a handful of Jews remain today. A rich heritage of thousands of years was abruptly curtailed.
In the aftermath of the Farhud, Iraqi Jewry made a difficult decision. They chose not to despair; they chose not to stay focused only on the past but to direct their efforts towards the future. They chose not to mire in victimhood but to invest in building new lives and a new future in the State of Israel. In short, they chose life.
