Lyn Julius
The Jews of Iraq

Lyn Julius | The Jews of Iraq | 08.09.21

- Good morning, Lyn. Good morning Judi. How are you today?

• Morning.

• Fine, thank you. And you?

• Great, thank you. There was a very big Jewish community in Iraq, wasn’t there?

• Yes, about 150,000.

• Oh my Goodness, yeah.

• Not big compared to America .

• No, no. So I think that when you’re ready, you know, over to you. You can start.

• Okay.

• Thank you.

• Right, thanks very much. Thank you.

• So welcome, everybody. I just want to say good morning to everybody and thank you once again for joining us.

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

• Okay. So thank you very much, Wendy. Thank you, Judi. Good afternoon from London and thank you for joining me for another talk. My topic today is the “Jews of Iraq”. It’s hard not to make a comparison with the Jews of Morocco, whom I talked about in my last lecture. You could say that Morocco and Iraq are at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as the treatment of Jews is concerned. Whereas Morocco is stable, Iraq is dangerous with bombs still going off. Whereas Morocco welcomes Jews, Iraq has severed its links. A Jew who visits Iraq would be putting his life at risk. Whereas Morocco has made great strides towards normalising relations, Iraqis, despite expressions of sympathy from some people, are still officially at war with Israel.

Morocco, unlike Iraq, has never executed Jews and whereas Morocco has seen violence against Jews, it has been nothing like on the same scale as the Iraqi Farhud, the massacre of 1941 whose 80th anniversary was commemorated this year. Judaism itself originated in Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers, When Abraham destroyed his father, Terah’s idols and introduced the idea of the one God to humankind. The Jewish community of Iraq is the oldest Jewish diaspora. It’s 2,600 years old, a thousand years older than Islam and the Arab conquest. The Jews are therefore one of the indigenous people of the region, going back to the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE, when King Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews as captive slaves from Jerusalem. There by the rivers of Babylon, they sat down and wept as they remembered Zion.

Only 70 years later, the Persian King Cyrus decreed that the Jews could return to Jerusalem. But life was so good that many decided to stay there and the community was in continuous residence there until about 50 years ago. It was in Babylonia that Judaism, as we practise today, was shaped and the scholars of the pre-Islamic academies of Sura and Pumbedita wrote the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Hillel was born in Babylonia. The first few centuries after the Arab conquest, under the Abbasids, was a glorious period. Sa'adia Gaon was the first important rabbinic figure to write extensively in Judeo-Arabic and to integrate Jewish theology with components of Greek philosophy.

The community had its ups and downs and the Jews were subjugated dhimmis under Islam, but the Jews outlived Medes and Persians, Umayyad, Abbasids, Mongols, Arabs and Ottoman Turks right up to 1917 when the British, under General Maude, defeated the Turks who sided with the Germans in World War I. Iraq was on the road to India, The jewel in the crown of the British Empire. In the 19th century, Baghdadi Jews, like the Sassoons who you see see here, and the Kadoories created a business empire of their own, migrating to India, Burma, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The British soon appreciated the importance of Iraq’s vast oil reserves. Iraq supplied 90% of the fuel for the British Navy. The oil was pumped from Mosul in the north to Haifa. The pipeline was known as the carotid artery of the British Empire.

And here’s General Maude who walked into Baghdad in 1917, having defeated the Turks. In 1920, the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate for Mesopotamia. Britain was to help govern the mandate until the country was ready for independence. But instead of an Arab government with British advisors, Britain wanted a British government with Arab advisors, especially one that would maintain military control of the oil through the Anglo Iraqi treaty. Three figures were key to the British mandate for Iraq, and they were all connected with the Arab Bureau, an intelligence gathering office in Cairo. Gertrude Bell, known as the uncrowned queen of Iraq, was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. She was an archaeologist, an adventuress, a mountaineer. In fact, mountains in the Bernese Oberland are named Gertrudespitze, after her.

Obviously she was a very feisty woman. Once she was stuck on a rope in the Alps for 50 hours and got frostbite, but she was obviously extremely tough. She died in 1926, aged only 57 of an overdose. The second figure in the Arab Bureau was T.E. Lawrence, who you see on the right of King Faisal in the centre of your picture. T.E. Lawrence was an archaeologist, a military strategist, a diplomat. It was he who helped lead the Arab revolt against the Turks. He found Emir Faisal of the Hashemite dynasty in Arabia, and as a reward for Faisal’s help in defeating the Turks, promised he would be made the ruler of a Pan Arab kingdom based in Damascus.

But the French had other ideas, as Trudy has explained. They defeated Faisal at the Battle of Maysalun and expelled him from Syria. As a consolation prize, Faisal was given the throne of Iraq. The third figure behind the British mandate is one you may never have heard of, a man called Sir Kinahan Cornwallis. and here he is on the extreme left of your picture. He was very, very tall, 6'4" and obviously towered over everybody. Cornwallis was a personal advisor to Faisal for 14 years. Although he is the least known, he’s possibly the most powerful of advisors, being an advisor to the Ministry of the Interior. This post may sound mundane, but Cornwallis was actually a plenipotentiary, then he became British Ambassador to Baghdad until 1935, returning to Baghdad in April, 1941, just before The Farhud Massacre. more about what Cornwallis did, or more exactly did not do in The Farhud Massacre later.

Faisal was none too pleased to be fobbed off with the throne of Iraq. He was unhappy with the Anglo Iraqi treaty. He was petulant, intransigent and threatened to abdicate several times during his reign. He had to be dragged to Iraq by Cornwallis. Sir Sassoon Eskell, later the Jewish finance minister, remarked to Winston Churchill, who was then Secretary of the Colonies that Faisal was the first ruler to come from the south, i.e. Arabia. Iraq’s governors usually came from the north, i.e. Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Churchill replied, “Ah, but he came with Cornwallis and Cornwallis is from the north”.

From the start, Iraq presented a problem to its minorities. Iraq was not a nation, it was cobbled together out of three Ottoman provinces. The Kurds in the north had nothing in common with the Shia in the south and did not even speak the same language. The Ottoman Empire had been corrupt, but each community was given a measure of security by being allowed to govern itself. In the new Iraq, minorities would be at the mercy of the Arab majority. The Jews were so worried about this that on three occasions in 1918, they visited the British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, to demand British nationality. In her letters, Gertrude Bell also expressed concern about minorities. After all, Armenians, Kurds and Assyrians had all been massacred in the previous decade. Baghdad was a Jewish city. The Jews numbered about 80,000 and were the largest single ethnic group. Gertrude Bell was very impressed by the abilities and dynamism of the Jews she met. “There is no doubt they will be a great power someday”, she wrote.

But the famous Iraqi Jewish Historian, Elly Kadoorie, who later taught at the LSE, commented that, “They, the Jews, were defeated from the start, but they did not know it and would not know it for a long time to come.” Faisal was crowned king of Iraq in 1921. Jews only have affection for Faisal, who they think was a very fair and wise leader. He declared that there was no difference between Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Jews had benefited from a western education, languages, maths and science since the opening of the Alliance Israeli Universelle Boys School in 1864. An Alliance girls school was opened in 1893 and here you see it on your screen.

As a result, the Jews became the backbone of the colonial administration. They ran the port, the railways, the telegraph, and the postal service. In the 1920s, Iraq appointed a Jewish Finance Minister, Sir Sassoon Heskel. He is still considered one of the most successful ministers ever. He tied Iraq’s oil revenues to the gold standard. The Jews were also prominent in trade. And here you see my two grandfathers with their handled bar moustaches and they were involved in the textile trade, importing cloth from India. Of 18 members of the Chamber of Commerce, 10 were Jews. Iraq’s musicians were very prominent. And here you see the Al Kuwaiti Brothers, the Simon and Garfunkel of the music scene in Iraq and the musicians in Iraq were mostly Jews. On the right, you see a very famous singer called Salima Murad, also known as Salima Pasha, and dubbed the Voice of Iraq. Jews also contributed massively to literature. They took part in the Renaissance or Nahda.

The first novel was written by a Jew, and Jews were really very integrated in the local culture. Iraq became nominally independent in 1932. King Faisal died in 1933, but a massacre of 600 Assyrian Christians at Simele in the north of the country did not bode well for the minorities. Although Faisal had been a friend of the Jews, he had brought with him to the country a group of fierce nationalists. For instance, Sati’ al-Husri was a Syrian who became director general of the Ministry of Education in Iraq. And together with the Palestinian Al-Muqdadi, he founded the Nationalist Muthanna Club which produced the ring Leaders of the Farhud Riot. A large colony of Arab nationalist exiles formed. They engaged in vicious incitement against the Jews, Zionism, and the British. They had a clear strategy of indoctrinating the youth with the values of nationalism and militarism.

So from the late 1920s, fascist influence rose, as did antisemitic sentiment. My mother tells the anecdote that the family gardener who lived in a hut at the bottom of the garden in the 1930s, his wife had a baby, and my mother congratulated the gardener’s wife and inquired, “What was his name?” “Hitler”, came the reply. My mom was mortified, but also shocked that a humble gardener could have heard of Hitler. In the rising climate of pro Nazism in the 1930s, Jewish civil servants were dismissed, although later reinstated. Quotas on Jews in universities and the professions were introduced. Many members of the Sunni governing elite had served in the Ottoman Army alongside German officers and admired German militarism. Many saw Iraq as the leader of Pan-Arabism. Nationalist parties such as the Baath Party were established on the Nazi model and pro-Nazi paramilitary youth groups, such as the Futuwwa.

The Futuwwa sent a delegation to attend the Hitlerjugend torchlight procession in Nuremberg in 1938. with Germany’s eye on Iraq’s vast oil reserves, the German ambassador, Fritz Gruber sent out German girls to seduce army officers and set up a network of spies and sympathisers in order to forge an anti-British alliance. There was the small matter that Arabs were considered untermenschen, Gruber had “Mein Kampf” translated into Arabic and serialised in an Iraqi newspaper with the anti-Arab passages excised. By the end of the decade, the Nazis had recognised the Arabs as honorary Aryans. In past lectures, you’ve heard of the pernicious influence of the Palestinian Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini who sought an alliance with the Nazis from the time of Hitler’s rise to power. I would argue that the mufti was an ideological antisemite more than he was a pragmatic anti-colonial.

The mufti of Jerusalem arrived in Baghdad in 1939 after the Arab revolt was put down by the British In Palestine. He came with 400 Syrian and Palestinian families and was nicknamed the uncrowned King of Iraq. He spent two years attempting to overthrow the pro-British government, inciting the local Muslims against the Jews who were seen as collaborators with the British. After several failed attempts, the Mufti gave his backing to a pro-Nazi coup led by the nationalist, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani And four army officers, forcing the pro British regent into exile. There is some evidence that the Mufti, Rashid Ali and their cohorts had plans to round up Jews into ghettos just before their government fell. The fanatical antisemite, Younis al-Sebai, self-styled governor of Baghdad, summoned Rabbi Sassoon Kadoorie, the community leader, to tell the Jews to lock themselves in their homes and prepare enough food for three days. Was this so that they could be rounded up and sent to desert camps?

On the 1st of May, fearful that Iraq’s oil would fall into German hands, the British declared war on pro-Nazi Iraq. The British army defeated the Iraqis in short order, and on the 31st of May, they put to flight the Mufti and his acolytes. They fled to Iran and ended up in Berlin for the rest of the war as guests of Hitler, broadcasting poisonous anti-Jewish propaganda. But in Iraq, the damage had been done. On the 1st of June, 1941, a group of Jews who’d been locked in their homes for the previous month ventured out in their Shavuot best clothes to greet the returning regent. As they stood on the bridge over the Tigris, the Farhud, the name is an obscure term for forced dispossession, started. A mob of defeated Iraqi soldiers and pro Nazis, including some police, later joined by Bedouins in search of loot, began to pull Jews out of buses to slaughter them. Armed mobs then rampaged through the Jewish quarter on the left bank of the Tigris.

The riot continued through the night and into the next day and crossed the river as Jews barricaded themselves into their homes and/or escaped across the flat roofs. Here you see on the right the flat roofs of Baghdad, and they were close enough together for Jews who were threatened by the rioters to actually jump from roof-to-roof. And on the left you see one of the pontoon bridges across the river Tigris. Many were saved by their Muslim neighbours. Others recognised the milkman or the local policemen among their assailants. Was this just another anti-Jewish pogrom, as erupted sporadically in the Arab world? Or was it premeditated? We have reason to believe that the Farhud was planned and the result of sustained incitement and Nazi propaganda.

Four days previously, the Propagandist, Younis Bahri, began broadcasting venomous anti-Jewish incitement on Radio Berlin. The paramilitary youth group, the Futuwwa had gone around daubing a red hand print on the Jewish homes before the riot began. Why did the British not intervene? The British army was encamped eight miles from Baghdad, but did not enter the city. Staff of the British embassy could hear the screams and gunshots coming from across the river, but the British army was under orders not to intervene until the second day when the mob began to attack Muslim quarters. From his diary, Somerset de Chair, who visited the embassy a few days later, “It is obvious that Cornwallis was fully aware of what was going on, but did nothing to stop the killing. He told me that 2,000 people, mostly Jews, were believed to have been killed in one night’s looting, a figure which was subsequently reduced to 700.”

Cornwallis had been appointed British ambassador to Baghdad just before the Farhud. He did not want the British to be seen to be reoccupying the country, at least not before a new Iraqi government could be set up. Once the orders had been given however, the riot was put down very quickly. It’s not known how many Jews were killed. There were at least 179 identified Jews murdered. But the death toll could have been 600 or even more. There were a thousand injured, 586 shops wrecked, and 900 homes looted down to the door and window frames. Babies were mutilated, women raped, and Jewish patients were even poisoned in hospital or the injured left to die untreated. Dead bodies were hurriedly collected and buried in a loaf-shaped mass grave, which you see here.

Although prosperity did return to the Jews of Iraq in the years following the Farhud, they had received a terrible shock. Members of the Iraqi intelligentsia defended Rashid Ali, no writers mentioned the Farhud, while popular songs celebrated it. The Farhud marked a watershed moment for the community. Many of the youth turned to Zionism or communism. The underground Zionist movement began to stockpile secret arms caches so that if another Farhud broke out, they would be able to defend themselves.

The day after Israel declared its independence on May the 15th, 1948, Iraq was one of seven Arab League countries to send in its army. “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres.” Promised Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League. Iraq’s military forces saw limited action but martial law was imposed by Baghdad. The Arab armies were poorly organised and equipped. The UN negotiated and implemented an armistice with Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Only Iraq refused to sign, continuing its state of war and demanding what it called, “Another chance to fight”.

On July the 19th, 1948, Iraq amended penal code law 51 against anarchy, immorality, and communism, adding the word Zionism. Zionism itself now became a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison. As every Jew was thought to be a Zionist, every Jew became a criminal. Only two Muslim witnesses were needed to denounce a Jew. Thousands of Jewish homes were searched. One man was sentenced to five years hard labour for merely possessing a scrap of paper with a Hebrew inscription, presumed to be a coded Zionist message. Hundreds of Jews were now arrested, forced to confess under torture. Vasts sums were extorted to pay for Iraq’s war, and Jews were sentenced to long jail terms. About 1,500 Jews were sacked from public service jobs. The Jewish banks, key to foreign commerce, lost their licences to import money.

The greatest shock to the Jewish community occurred when the single wealthiest Jew in Iraq, Shafik Ades, was accused of selling weapons to Israel and simultaneously of being a communist. Ades thought his connections with the royal family would protect him. He was tried by a military tribunal, quickly found guilty, fined $20 million and condemned to death. His entire estate was liquidated. A few days later, on September the 23rd, 1948, Ades was publicly hanged in Basrah in front of his family house. His body languished in the square for hours to be abused by the celebrating crowds. Many more arrests, executions, and confiscations followed. The execution of Shafik Ades had a deep effect on the community.

If the richest and best-connected Jew in Iraq who had no links with the Zionist could be hanged, what prospects were there for the rest? Jews were desperate to get out and soon, a thousand Jews a month were being smuggled through the south of the country into Iran. Iran did not have official links with Israel. $450,000 were given mainly to the Iranian Prime Minister, but also to other government officials and media sources. The Iraqi government was alarmed to be haemorrhaging so many Jews and their capital. It decided in March, 1950 to legalise immigration, thinking that only 10,000 hotheads and undesirables would leave. Plans were floated for an exchange of populations with the Palestinians.

As it turned out, over a 100,000 Jews decided to register to leave. Only 14,000 Palestinians arrived in the opposite direction. Jews could only leave on condition they were de-nationalized, stripped of their citizenship. The window for legal immigration closed a year later and in March, 1951, the Iraqi parliament turned the last twist of the knife; a law freezing all the Jews’ property. This left Jewish assets frozen and the departing emigrants destitute. Even the Nazis had not stooped to such depth. The formidable task of organising the mass airlift fell to the young operatives of the Mossad. Mordechai Ben Porat was the Mossad’s emissary in Baghdad. He had walked all the way to Israel in 1945, but had returned to Baghdad to help get the Jews out. He was arrested several times and tortured in jail, but was spirited back to Israel before he could be executed. He is still alive and well into his nineties.

Shlomo Hillel was another extraordinary character who had moved from Iraq to Israel. He died just a few months ago, aged 97. Shlomo Hillel was sent back to Iraq to finalise the details of the airlift. He could not reveal any links with Israel, although small and swarthy, he pretended to be a pipe smoking English gentleman called Richard Armstrong. A meeting was arranged between Armstrong, Ronnie Barnett, a British Jew who organised pilgrimage to Mecca and the Iraqi Prime Minister Tawfiq Al-Suwaidi, in order to sign a contract with a travel company called Iraq Tours. The Prime Minister Suwaidi was on the board of this company. Hillel’s cover was almost blown when the Jewish community leader, a cousin of his mothers’, was summoned to the meeting. Thankfully, the cousin did not recognise Hillel. Hillel tells his story in a brilliant book called “Operation Babylon”.

They agreed on a ticket price of 12 Dinars, and that’s about $48 per passenger. The planes would be operated by near Eastern Air Transport, a branch of Alaska Airlines headed by James Wooten, who had airlifted out 50,000 Jews from Yemen in 1949. The planes were meant to be bound to Cyprus, but actually they flew onto Lida. Israel could not work fast enough to cope with the backlog of Jews who had registered to go and were waiting to be airlifted out. The Iraqi Prime minister grew impatient and threatened to dump thousands of Jews on the Jordanian border or in the Kuwaiti Desert. By July, 1951, 95%, 120,000 Jews had left for Israel. This is a laissez passer document that was issued to the Jews. You will notice the stamp on the left hand page, which says in Arabic “One way, no return.” So effectively, these Jews were being expelled. They were not allowed to come back.

Now, the Jews when they arrived in Israel were bitterly disappointed. They were sent to Ma'abarot, or tent camps, mostly in the centre of the country. “For this, we left Baghdad”, they said. There was not enough food, no jobs. But today, the Iraqi community is well-integrated and successful. It is the third largest in Israel, after the Russian and the Moroccan. What happened to the Jews who were left behind? About 6,000 Jews remained in Iraq. For a time, conditions improved. The king was murdered in a bloody revolution in 1958, and there was a brief interlude when Jews could prosper and come and go as they pleased. But in the early 1960s, the regime imposed new restrictions. Jews had to carry a yellow ID card and could not travel more than a few kilometres. They could not leave the country.

In 1967, Israel achieved a great victory in the Six-Day War, but it was a terrible defeat for the Arab countries. The Iraqi Baathist regime turned on its Jews to exact its revenge. By then, only about 3,000 Jews were still living there. They were sacked from jobs, their bank accounts frozen. They were banned from universities, their telephones cut off. Above all, they were hostages and could not leave the country. On the 27th of January, 1969, nine Jews were among 14 people executed and hanged in Baghdad’s Liberation Square on trumped-up spying charges. The next day was declared a public holiday, and half a million people came to sing and dance under the corpses. This was only the beginning of the reign of terror against the Jews. 50 Jews were imprisoned and disappeared, never to be seen again. The remaining Jews were desperate to leave.

Eventually, some 2,000 managed to get smuggled out of the country with the help of Mossad and of the Kurds. They left in the dead of night, disguised as Arabs with one suitcase as if they were going on holiday, and they journeyed through the mountains of Kurdistan and over the border into Iran. I have several relatives who made that journey. One was an aunt who’d actually settled in London with her family, but she’d gone back to sell some property in 1964, thinking it would take her just a few weeks or maybe a month, and she could rejoin her family in London. As it turned out, she was trapped for six years and my parents had to look after her children. But she made it through the Kurdish Mountains and into Iran and was reunited with her family. Today, there are just three Jews in Iraq. This was the fourth Jew who died in I think March of this year, aged excuse me, only 61.

So 2,600 years of Jewish life in Iraq are over. And soon, people will say that Jews never lived in Iraq. The Tomb of Jonah was destroyed by ISIS or Islamic State. Jewish heritage has been allowed to crumble or is steadily being erased. This is the Tomb of Ezekiel, which has been transformed into a mosque. But I don’t remember UNESCO protesting. And this was done in the last five years or so. The Iraqi Jewish Archive is a particularly disturbing case. This is the collection of documents, books, and artefacts that were stolen from the Jewish community by Saddam Hussein’s regime. It was retrieved by the Americans from the flooded basement of the Secret Police headquarters in 2003 and shipped to America for restoration. Now, the Iraqis have claimed that the archive is their national heritage, and the US government has promised to return it to Iraq.

For the Jews, this adds insult to injury. Not only have they been driven out of the country as refugees, they lost all their property without a penny of compensation. But the Iraqi government wants to lay its hands on the last vestiges of what belongs to the Jews. In other words, they want to complete the job of their dispossession and regrettably, it’s likely they will be allowed to get away with it.

So I’ll stop there. Thank you very much for listening. Very happy to answer questions.

• [Wendy] And can you see the questions at the bottom?

• Yes. Yes I can.

Q&A and Comments

• Okay. Right. Danny Wilson says,

Q: “A jew visits Iraq puts his life at risk. What about Edwin Shuker who has visited Baghdad and has actually bought a house in Iraq?” A: Yes. Edwin is the only Jew I know who has actually visited Iraq. He doesn’t usually go to Baghdad, actually, he’s only done that once, in order to make the film that you obviously saw, Danny. It was actually very risky what he did, and I don’t think he’s repeated the experience. He bought a house which he’s never lived in, and it wasn’t in Baghdad, it was in Kurdistan, which is actually a bit safer than Baghdad.

Monica. “He’s written a book called The Farhud.” No, that’s a different Edwin, Edwin Black, A very good book actually, which I highly recommend, “The Farhud”. Alan Woolman “Recently read ‘The Last Kings of Shanghai’, Most fabulous book.” Yes, we’ve mentioned this before. Also recommended Elda Briese, Gertrude Bell, her letters from Baghdad. Great read. Yes. Thank you for that, Alan.

Q: “Seems the new geography as a result of World War I proved to be disastrous. Was there no forethought?” A: Obviously not, Arlene.

Marilyn, “The Sassoon family, highly talented. Members of the Sassoon family went to England and South Africa have done well in commerce in these countries.” Good to hear it.

Q: “In what language did the Jews of Iraq write? What language did they speak?” A: Well, they spoke Arabic, but they spoke a a particular dialect of Arabic, which you could call Judeo-Arabic. And this they wrote in Hebrew characters.

“Interesting about the gardener’s wife. The third Reich was known to Iraqis when I lived in Israel. We made friends with some young Moroccan of our age, who had only known about the Holocaust when they arrived in Israel. They said they had no knowledge about it whilst living in Morocco. I believed it then, but have cast doubt about it since. What are your views?” Well, if they’re young Moroccans, it’s quite possible that they did not know much about the Holocaust. Certainly, how the Holocaust affected Jews in Arab countries was not taught in Israeli schools up until recently. Thank you, Jackie.

Q: Arlene Goldberg, “When did your family leave Iraq and under what circumstances?” A: Well, my own family left in 1950 when most Jews went to Israel. They were in a very small minority who came to England. They managed to get passports for England.

John says, “Surely the Quran teaches subjugation of Jews and Christians? It was only a matter of the right circumstances for persecution to begin.” I’m not sure about that. “According to ‘The Dove flyer’, Jews were forced to step off the pavement, even cross the road.” Well, that was under Sharia law, and certainly when it was strictly applied, that was the case. There was latent hostility, but actually the Jews did have a golden age in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Thank you, Bonnie. Thank you. Ah, yes. You’ve had relatives called Adolph . Yes, Margaret. This was before the Abbasids made or maybe the Jews lived side-by-side.“ Well, the Jews were the indigenous inhabitants of Iraq or Mesopotamia, well before the Arabs.

Q: "When did Lyn’s family leave Iraq?” A: I just told you.

“Rashid Ali were sent to prison.” Oh, good. I’m glad to hear that. Mike, “My late father” that’s in Rhodesia. “My late father Joseph Ezra Salem, born and brought up in Baghdad, was a naturalised British subject. Seconded to the British intelligence, of course, called in to deal with these ministers in custody.” How fascinating is that? I’d love to know more, Mike.

Eva, “I missed what Shafik Ades was accused of before being executed. Yeah, he was accused of smuggling weapons and also being a Zionist and being a communist at the same time.

Q: "Is Thomas Ades a descendant of Shafik?” A: I don’t know, Dennis. Sorry. Possibly, or related very distantly. Probably not.

“Mordechai Ben-Porat, wonderful museum about Iraqi Jews near Tel Aviv”, Barbara. Yes. It’s called the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre. I do recommend it. It’s in Or Yehuda, which is just close to Tel Aviv. Alan Woolman, “I have an elderly neighbour who was born in Baghdad, came to Israel in the early '50s telling me he had to leave everything. Property, business, money, just everything without leaving. It was part of that airlift you mentioned, was housed in the tent town here in Israel. Awful experience.” Absolutely. Patricia Fine,

Q: “Why did 6,000 Jews remain behind? Was it the aged who felt they couldn’t travel?” A: Well, actually it was the better off who had more to lose. Also, in the early '50s, some of them received messages from their relatives who were in the tent camps who actually told them not to come, that things were so bad. And then after that they got stuck.

“Operation Babylon” by Shlomo Hillel is available on Amazon. $902 is the asking price.“ Yes, obviously it’s out of print. I’m so sorry about that. Maybe it’s in your library. Who knows? Sorry, that’s a shame. We ought to get it reprinted. John Winlow.

Q: "How well have the Jews from Iraq done in Israel since? I met and worked with quite a few when I worked down in Eilat with Herut and Solel Boneh back in the '70s.” A: I think the answer is they’ve done very well. Diane, thank you.

Margaret. “If the Americans return the archives, the Iraqis will probably publicly destroy them.” Well, this is the fear, but I think more than that, it’s possible that they won’t be able to take care of them. That they might destroy them, that somebody might drop a bomb on them. But the the principle is that the archives don’t belong to them and they should really be, you know, available to Jew who are now outside Iraq.

Q: “Where are Sura and Pumbedita, where the Talmud was written?” A: I’ll have to look that up for you. The wonderful book, that’s James Levy, Elly Strauss, the wonderful book, “My Father’s Paradise.”

Oh, my husband has just found Operation Babylon on eBay at the princely sum of 15 pounds. Thank you, Lawrence.

Ellie Strauss, “The wonderful book 'My Father’s Paradise’ describes the trek and fate of Iraqi Jews who had lived in peace and harmony with their Arab neighbours and were dispossessed from one day to the next.” This book keeps coming up every time I give a talk. It’s actually, it concerns Kurdish Jews from the north of the country. It paints quite an idealised picture. I’ve already pointed out that not everything in the garden was rosy and the aunt of the protagonist was abducted as a baby. For many generations, the Kurdish Jews were actually the chattels of the local tribal chieftains.

Christopher Bull, thank you. oh dear. “My immediate family story being in Iraq and how they had to leave.” Well, my parents left in 1950. Those who remained, that’s my grandparents, several cousins and aunts. And of course this aunt I mentioned were actually trapped in the 1960s up until 1970. Then the illegal smuggling operation took place through Kurdistan and they were able to leave. Thank you, John.

Q: “Why did the Jews not leave when they realised that all their rights were being taken away?” A: The answer is they couldn’t. The Jews were only allowed one year to leave and that was when immigration was legalised in 1950. And the condition was they had to forfeit their citizenship and then they had to forfeit their property or their property was frozen.

Q: “Was S. Murad the singer related to Layla Murad of Egypt?” A: No, actually quite a different Murad. But it’s possible that somewhere along the line they were the same family. Who knows, Monica?

Paulette, “My original family name was Baghdadi. I suspect they were from Iraq.” Yes, I think they might well have been. What do I suggest? I would try Farhi, Le Fleur de L'Orient. That is the most comprehensive genealogical website. Farhi.com, and you might well find your family on there.

Q: Sheila, “Thank you for the session. Do you know any notable Israeli politicians with Iraqi background?” A: Yeah, there were several ministers. Those two I mentioned, Ben Porat and Shlomo Hillel were both ministers at one point. Hillel was the speaker of the Knesset.

Q: “How many Jews still live in Iraq?” A: Three.

Grace, “I left in 1959 with my family. Definitely think Iraq without us will go down the sewer.” I think a lot of Iraqis have already reached that conclusion. And you know, obviously, it’s left a gaping hole in Iraqi society and in the economy.

Q: Nick says, “Why is the story of the treatment of the Jews of Iraq so little known, particularly by contrast to the Palestinian story?” A: You said it, Nick. I wish it was more known. And I think we need more balance in the way that the story is told. So, you know, like anything that we can do to spread the word would be great.

Edna Oppenheimer. Edna, “Wonderful book about the Jewish community amongst the Kurds.” Yeah. “My Father’s Paradise” by Ariel Sabar. Thank you, I’ve already mentioned that. Basil Hillman, “When I had an audience with the grand in Tunis in the early ‘60s, he asked me if Hitler was still alive.” Sorry, that was his secretary.

Q: Elaine Sack, “Did Jews have to pay to leave?” A: Yes, they did.

Q: “Did they have to pay to remain behind?” A: No, they didn’t, but they had to bribe their way through life. I mean, that was like a fact of life. You know, in order to be left alone, you know, bribery was very much part of life. Okay.

I think “My Father’s Paradise” there’s quite a few fans here. Francine recommends it. Yeah, I’m not saying I don’t recommend it. I think it’s a good read. It’s a good story. I’m not sure it’s that typical though. Barbara, thank you. Emotional, sad and angry.

Q: Cynthia, “Why do you think more Palestinians didn’t emigrate to Iraq during the exchange?” A: That’s a good question, actually. It could be because Palestinians in Iraq did not get given many rights and still don’t have many rights. But I need to look into that. Thank you for that.

Lorna, thank you. She recommends a book on the life of Gertrude Bell, “The Desert Queen” by Janet Wallace. Yes, that’s a great book. Judith, thank you.

Q: Jan Flapan, “Who can American citizens contact in the US government to protest the return of the archives?” A: I would contact your congressman and take it from there.

Yona, “There were Jews called Ades in Syria.” Yes, so I do know that Shafik Ades’ family did come from Syria, so Thomas might well be related.

• [Lawrence] Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem.

• Oh yeah, there’s the Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem.

Q: Jan, “Is there an association of former Iraqi Jews chronicling the fortunes of their descendants in the diaspora, and if so, how is it organised?” A: Well, apart from the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre in Or Yehuda, there isn’t that much in the diaspora. There’s the American Sephardi Federation, but that really covers all the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities. There’s my organisation, Harif which tries to raise awareness of the history and culture of all these Jews. But as for Iraqi Jews, actually, I’ve just thought of one and that’s in New York, I think it’s called The Babylonian Centre. There are also Babylonian synagogues, Babylonian Jewry synagogues, especially in the States. There’s one in LA, there’s one just outside New York. And that probably answers your question there, Jan.

“Desert Queen” by Janet Waller. Alice says, “I stayed on Kibbutz Ma'abarot in 1959.” No, ma'abara is a name for a tent camp. It’s not the actual name of the tent camps. So there were about 300 Ma'abarot dotted around the country and many of them did become real towns. Like for instance, Or Yehuda started life as a tent camp, Sderot started life as a tent camp and is now a real town. Noreen, “Lyn, thank you for this fascinating lecture in English.” Oh ! “I usually get to hear you in Hebrew.” Thanks. Sorry, my fellow Hebrew student, Brian. Thank you.

Q: Barry Epstein, “Were the Iraqis who went to Israel treated well by the Ashkenazis in Israel?” A: Well, I would caution against generalising here that some people from Iraq or indeed from other Arab countries had a very hard time in Israel. But as a whole, I would say the Iraqi community has done very well. And you would usually find Iraqis running banks, you know, they’re the tellers and the managers, they’re quite a middle class community, obviously because of the alliance, They were very well educated and I think they brought that back with them to Israel.

Q: Rosa Akmani asks, “What are my thoughts on Lawrence? I’ve read that he was fair to the Jews. Thank you very much for your compliment.” A: Well, I think Lawrence was a Zionist. And unlike Gertrude Bell, actually, he was sidelined in the 1930s. So, you know, I don’t think he had very much influence then. And of course, king Faisal had died and Lawrence died prematurely in that motorcycle accident.

Q: “What was Allenby’s role in this terrible episode?” A: Not quite sure which episode? You mean The Farhud? Oh, Allenby wasn’t involved in this at all.

Q: Wendy asks, “Can you speak about what was in the archive?” A: There were rumours that there were very early editions of the Talmud there. I think the oldest item there goes back to the 16th century and was a Hebrew bible. There are fragments of the Talmud there. I mean, a lot of it was damaged in the basement of the Secret Police headquarters. I wouldn’t say there was anything very valuable, but it is obviously valuable to the community. And what they did find was some copies of books that were actually owned by famous rabbis. For instance, the Ben Ish Chai, who was a very famous rabbi in the early 1900s. And even if you digitise these documents, it’s not the same because they found handwritten notes in the margins of some of these books. And all this would never have been found if people had just relied on the digital copies of these documents.

Q: Susan asked, “Are there Jewish groups in America to protest the return of the documents, which obviously belong to Jewish heritage?” A: I would get in touch with your congressman and protest that way. There’s also an organisation called JIMENA, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, based in California. And they have been very active protesting against this.

Q: “Is there a movement to try and recover those Iraqi archives?” A: Well, is there a movement? You know, I think everybody’s got to protest and make their voices heard. You know, the trouble is that Mizrahi Jews, Iraqi Jews are such a small minority, and Ashkenazi Jews just do not know about these issues. But what we would like to see is that Ashkenazi Jews protest as much as everybody else. I think get in touch with your congressman in the first instance.

Yoland, yes, Jewish archives in Egypt cannot leave Egypt. Absolutely right. My organisation, Harif, will be having a discussion about this on the 14th of September. Do check out the website www.harif.org and we will be discussing the Iraqi Jewish archive as well.

Thank you, Nikki. Jenny, thank you. She’s reading “The Silk Road”, ties up with the historical. Yep. Thank you. Ellie Straus, “Operation Babylon”. Oh, you found one for $55 on Amazon in hardcover. Well done. That’s “Operation Babylon”.

Jen, she worked for the Nakash Brothers in New York. They left Iraq in 1951, went to Israel, came to New York, started Jordache, shipping hotels, et cetera, in Israel and New York in large chain of VM stores. Well, obviously did very well.

Sura was close to Kabbalah. Thank you very much for that, Brian. And it’s close to Anasuria on your map, thank you.

Ellie Straus, “Thank you for your comments on the book. I was fascinated by the language aspect as I am a linguist. I know it wasn’t rosy. Their fate in Israel was very sad.” Well, in terms of language, yes, they spoke Aramaic and obviously that language, you know, is no longer spoken by the present generation. So it is a dying language, which, you know, if you’re a linguist, this is obviously very sad.

“Their fate in Israel is very sad.” I wouldn’t say that. I think if they’d stayed in Iraq, it would’ve been much sadder. I think I’ve come to the end, Judi. Have I? Right?

• [Judi] Sorry Lyn, I had to try and unmute myself. I couldn’t see the button.

• Oh no, no. There are still a few more, so sorry.

• [Judi] If you have some time, yes?

• Yes I do. If you have.

• [Judi] Yes, we have some time still.

• [Lyn] Christopher.

• Sorry. Thank you. And that was fantastic. It’s just so interesting. I just quickly, before people start jumping off, just wanted to remind them that we have another lecture on in 45 minutes and that we’re going to have Patrick talking about the divas. Is that right?

• [Judi] “Divas of the Arab World”.

• Yeah. So I just wanted to remind everyone. I’m going to have to jump off, Lyn, so I wanted to say thanks a million.

• Okay, pleasure.

• Once again.

• Thank you very much. All right, you can continue. Thanks, bye.

• Thanks, Judi. Bye.

• [Judi] Lyn, we can go on for a little bit.

• A little bit. Okay then. Thank you very much, Carla. Thank you, Brian for doing the research on your Martin Gilbert map and Sarah Sassoon says, “What’s interesting is the Palestinians who moved to Iraq were housed in the emptied Baghdad Jewish schools and clubs.” Yeah, absolutely right. Vera Delal, thank you. Yvonne, thank you. Monica, thank you.

Ellie Strauss. “I so appreciate your role as more than a historian, but as a direct bystander or participant, the personal dedication is impressive.” Thank you very much Ellie.

Ilana, “Why did they send ladies to marry men in England?” “Shlomo Hillel was my friend.” Oh, you lucky thing. “And I helped him linchpin his book here.” Thank you, Ilana. Oh wow. Yes. I think I was there when you did that actually, Ilana. That was way back when, wasn’t it? A few years ago.

Abigail Hersch. “There’s an Iraqi community in Montreal.” So in, yeah, New York City, yeah. Mostly attached to the synagogues. Mimi Marks. “What about operation?” Suzanne, Sha'ar Ha'Aliya too was one of the biggest tent camps.“ That’s right. That was near Haifa. Sha'ar Ha'Aliya. That’s where Eli Amir was, the author Eli Amir was put in that camp.

Q: "How many Jews were murdered in Iraq?” A: That’s a good question. Well, we know that 50 were murdered in the late ‘60s and probably, well another two were executed in the early '50s. And then what with Jews who died of torture and whatnot, maybe a few, huh? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s including the '50s. I would say possibly about 60 people altogether.

Judy Feld Carr, wonderful lady but she had no role unfortunately in, or fortunately, in Iraq. Her role was mainly in ransoming Jews from Syria. Yes, Hindi. Hindi has got the answer. Edwin Black, yes. Ellie points out, “Edwin Black is actually very active on many fronts.” He’s great. “He may be able to help with the archive. He has a lot of good contacts.” We could ask him. “Congress people inept and uncaring.” I forgot to mention, there is a petition, which actually I started about 10 years ago. You can sign that.

Q: “Do I give lectures in Hebrew?” A: I actually have done, once, which was a bit of a struggle, but it’s not my mother tongue, I’m sorry. And I’m just a student. Thank you.

Q: “Could you talk about Syrian Jews, Iranian Jews and their trek?” A: Oh my goodness, Gloria. Thank you. I’ll think about that.

Leslie, thank you. Two quickies.

Q: “How did the documents from the Genizah in Cairo get to other museums?” A: I’ll answer your second question there. “Has anyone read 'when the Black Beetles Left Baghdad’?” Yes, I’ve read it. It’s by Mona Yahia, if I remember rightly and is absolutely brilliant, lovely book. Do recommend it if you can find it in print. And as for documents from the Genizah in Cairo, well some of that is in Cambridge, some of it is in Oxford. I think some of it is in America, but it’s all been digitised and put on computers. So it should be accessible, you know, wherever you happen to be. Thank you, thank you.

Q: “Do I speak Jewish Arabic?”, says Mark. A: Yeah, well I don’t really speak it, but I understand it and I certainly understand the curses, ‘cause my parents did do plenty of that in Judeo-Arabic.

Thank you, Carol. Yes, Ruben. Eli Amir’s book, “The Dove Flyer”. Very good book. Thank you, Abigail. Oh, thank you. Thank you for all your very kind words. I think that’s it, Judi.

• [Judi] Well that’s it, yes. That’s the end of the questions. So once again, thank you. And we did have over 1,500 participants online this evening.

• Wow.

• [Judi] And then also, just before we end, just to remind you again that we have Patrick Bay doing “Divas of the Arab World” in about 45 minutes. And Lyn, thank you so much. Look after yourself.

• Thank you. Thanks, Judi.

• [Judi] We’ll see you soon. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

• Take care, thanks everyone. Bye.