Safeguarding Iraq’s Jewish Archive
Iraq has decided to repatriate some of the Jewish historical documents found in Baghdad after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, while others will go on international display, providing a window for the world into Iraq’s cultural heritage.
The artifacts and important manuscripts that are today known as “the Jewish Archive” had been lying — for dozens of years — away from the public eye in a basement inside the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence services, in storage conditions that do not meet international standards. This had caused many of the documents to be damaged.
It was not until 2003 that this case became controversial. These artifacts could have been burned or totally destroyed without people knowing that they even existed in the basement.
