Iraqis hungry for knowledge on country's displaced Jews

Shukur Khilkhal

Dec 22, 2014

TO GO WITH STORY BY JOSEPH KRAUSS Muslim men sit at the entrance of a mosque, housing the tombs of the four companions of the Jewish prophet Ezekiel in the little town of Kifl, south of Baghdad, on April 29 2009. Muslims revere nearly all the central religious figures from Judaism and Christianity, including Ezekiel -- the prophet who followed the Judeans into the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. Between 1948 and 1951 nearly all of Iraq's 2,500-year-old Jewish community fled amid a region-wide outbr — Muslim men sit at the entrance of a mosque housing the tombs of the four companions of the Jewish Prophet Ezekiel in the small town of Kifl, south of Baghdad, April 29, 2009. — AFP PHOTO/Ahmad Al-Rubaye

عربي
עִברִית

While under Baath Party rule, from 1968 to 2003, the Iraqi people were barred from examining the issue of Jews living in Iraq, their forced emigration and their influence on Iraqi life. Everything about the Jewish community's contribution to Iraqi society was suppressed. Since 2003, however, Iraqis have begun revisiting their fellow Jews and their imprint on society. They have also begun to expose the methods used to displace them.

Jews had lived in Iraq for more than 2,500 years, mostly in Baghdad, but also in Babil, Mosul and other cities. They were estimated on average to represent 2.6% of the total Iraqi population. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Jews became victims of looting and killings, which eventually led to their displacement. The first attacks against Jews took place in 1941, under the Nazi-allied government of Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.