Moshe Kahtan was slightly below 3 years outdated when rioters ransacked the Jewish neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1941, however he nonetheless has vivid reminiscences from that day.
“When folks began banging on our door, we went up on our roof, and my dad and mom threw me throughout the roof to a different house to avoid wasting me,” Kahtan, now 88, recalled. “Our landlord was a Muslim, however he wasn’t raised in hatred like others of that era, so he went out to the road in entrance of our constructing with a gun, and mentioned he would shoot anybody who tried to assault the Jews inside.”
“Even now, a few years later, I nonetheless get flashbacks,” he added.
Through the two-day pogrom that began on June 1, 1941, Arab mobs went on a violent rampage of homicide, theft and rape that killed some 180 Jews, wounded greater than 1,000, and destroyed a whole lot of houses.
The pogrom, referred to as the Farhud (an Arabic time period for “violent dispossession”), is usually known as the Holocaust in Iraq, and marked the start of the tip of the almost 2,000-year historical past of Jews in Iraq, historians say.
However regardless of the importance of the riot to the Mizrahi Jewish neighborhood, most Israelis nonetheless lack consciousness about it, in accordance with David Kahtan, Moshe’s son.
“It’s solely not too long ago that the Farhud is beginning to develop into recognized in Israeli society,” Kahtan mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s 85 years too late.”
The youthful Kahtan is engaged on altering that. A 12 months after the tv broadcast of the documentary he produced in regards to the historical past of Iraqi Jewry, he led the creation of a memorial ceremony at Beit HaNassi, the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, marking the anniversary of the Farhud.
Some 200 folks attended the first-of-its-kind occasion, together with many survivors who arrived with their households to cross on their tales. On the entrance, one younger lady gently teased her grandfather that his id card was too outdated, and that he wouldn’t be admitted by the guards.
David Kahtan, who grew up within the UK and speaks higher English than Hebrew, is working to report the testimonies of survivors earlier than they die. Alongside the ceremony is a photograph show he organized of greater than 85 survivors, photographed by Rona Olshevsky.
“It is a private initiative that has develop into a life ardour,” Kahtan mentioned. “It’s not my career, however I’m making an attempt to do my half so this story will get informed.”
Witnesses to a bloodbath
Historians view the Farhud as a turning level within the historical past of Iraqi Jewry, shattering a way of safety among the many neighborhood and foreshadowing the mass exodus of a lot of the nation’s Jews to Israel over the approaching many years.
On the time of the assault, Iraq was dwelling to one of many world’s oldest Jewish communities, with 150,000 folks and roots stretching again greater than 2,500 years to the Babylonian exile. Jews performed outstanding roles in Iraq’s commerce, authorities and cultural life.
However the Farhud, which started throughout the Shavuot vacation, uncovered how Nazi-inspired antisemitism had unfold past the European continent and into the Arab world. It erupted throughout a interval of political instability in Iraq following the collapse of a pro-Nazi coup led by former prime minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. British-backed forces had simply retaken the nation, and rumors have been spreading that Iraqi Jews had aided the British victory.
“On that horrible night time, frenzied rioters descended upon the houses of the Jews of Baghdad, beating them, killing and wounding them… for one purpose alone: they have been Jews,” President Isaac Herzog mentioned on the opening of the ceremony. “Eighty-five years have handed, but the waves of antisemitic hatred proceed to rise, and even to accentuate, threatening the security of Jews the world over.”
Nadia Cohen, the widow of the legendary Israeli spy Eli Cohen, recalled the ambiance throughout the days earlier than the assaults in Baghdad, the place she lived as a younger baby.
She noticed an individual on the road marking Jewish homes within the neighborhood with paint in order that they may very well be simply recognized, and sensed that one thing in her world had modified. She didn’t inform her dad and mom, nevertheless.
“Lengthy earlier than I used to be the spouse of a well-known spy, I knew the right way to hold quiet,” Cohen informed attendees of the ceremony. “Our dad and mom have been listening to the radio in regards to the information coming from Germany on the time, they usually have been making an attempt to cover their anxieties from us.”
On the eve of the Shavuot vacation, the Jewish neighborhood was wearing festive white clothes, however when her father got here again from synagogue that morning, he was shocked by the scenes of slaughter he had witnessed on the streets, Cohen recalled.
Armed mobs attacked Jewish neighborhoods, looted houses and companies, and assaulted residents whereas safety forces largely didn’t intervene. Upon arriving dwelling, Cohen’s father had the knowledge to deliver some muffins and drinks to close by policemen, attracting them to guard their constructing and finally saving the household, she mentioned.
Eddy Mor was one other survivor who was visiting Baghdad for the vacation when the violence started. On his journey dwelling, he noticed folks pulled from their automobiles and slaughtered on the streets, and was solely saved when his bus discovered security at a police station in a single day. When he returned dwelling, a mob gathered round his home with knives and different weapons, however his father produced a gun — to the household’s shock — and managed to guard them quickly.
Whereas many Jewish households have been brutally betrayed by neighbors that they had trusted, others have been saved from the mob by Muslims as properly, Mor famous.
“If it weren’t for the assistance of Muslims, there would have been two or 3 times as many individuals murdered,” he mentioned. “However the official numbers don’t sufficiently mirror the scope of violence at the moment.”
One other survivor of the Farhud, Shlomo Mantzur, was only a child when his metropolis was attacked, and his household later moved to Israel. A long time later, Mantzur was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kissufim on October 7, 2023, together with his physique kidnapped to Gaza and held for 509 days.
“The writing was on the wall in Iraq on the time, and, whereas we thought such a factor might by no means occur once more, we have been attacked in our sovereign nation,” mentioned Mantzur’s sister, Hadassah Lazar. “The sample of hatred and violence was the identical in each instances.”
Survivors confused the significance of strengthening the reminiscence of the Farhud to protect the neighborhood’s legacy for future generations.
“I hope this occasion will develop into an annual reminder, as a result of we Jews are inclined to overlook,” Cohen concluded. “An Arab remembers his dwelling from 200 or 300 years in the past, and what was carried out to him then. We should additionally protect the reminiscence of what occurred to Iraqi Jewry. Our destiny relies on studying the historical past and never forgetting.”
