FARHUD
FARHUD - June-1941 pogrom on Jews in Iraq, only for being Jews:
The guilty:
- Hitler's F. Grobba;
- Nazi propaganda over the airwaves;
- Ex-Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini;
- Rashid 'Ali;
- Syrian/Palestinisn teachers;
- Arab-Nazi [Hitleryouth modelled] al-Futuwwa, Kataib gang;
- Iraqi police/army.
Victims:
180, 780 or 1,000 died and 1,000 to 2,000 injured.
At locations near river or wells, kids were thrown into the water in front of their parents eyes.
Scenes included smashed babies organs, mass rape. Patients and medical sraff were targeted at the attack on the Jewish hospital.
(Iraqi Jews were not Zionists at the time).
Carole L. Basri: 'The Jews of Iraq: A Forgotten Case of Ethnic Cleansing,' 2003, p.12
The official Iraqi Government report concerning the Farhud laid the blame for the slaughter on six sources.
First , the report noted the responsibility of the German Legation , for spreading sustained anti - Jewish Nazi propagandaunder the direction of Dr . Fritz Grobba.
A second source of incitement was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseni and his entourage, which accompanied him to Iraq in 1940 . As the report stated: "Once he was firmly established , he began disseminating Nazi propaganda with great cunning, while decrying the injustice done to Palestine and under the guise of Pan-Arabism and the Islamic religion."
Third , the report pointed to Palestinian and Syrian schoolteachers , installed in every school, who "poisoned the pupils' minds and turned them into instruments of their propaganda." Whenever they perceived that the government was taking any steps against Nazism, they went into action , arousing the students who would then go out in demonstrations and issue harmful manifestos. "The new government expelled these teachers."
Fourth , the report blamed the German Arabic - Language Radio Station, which also spread Nazi propaganda and whose persuasive power only increased after it was made legal by Rashid Ali.
Fifth, the report blamed antisemitic incitement broadcast by the Iraqi Broadcasting Station, which over the two months Rashid Ali was in control , "broadcast false reports about misdeeds in Palestine. The broadcasts contained patently inflammatory agitation against Jews and powerful appeals to A British intelligence Nazism."
A sixth element listed in the report were the Futuwwa and Youth Phalanxes , pro-Nazi paramilitary groups summed up the situation which had participated heavily in the Farhud .
https://books.google.com/books?id=690sAQAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Futuwwa%22
p.13
A British intelligence report also written in 1942 summed up the situation as one in which "whatever the outcome of the war , . . . the Iraqis will punish the Jews eventually."
https://books.google.com/books?id=690sAQAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=1942
'Farhud: a slaughter in Iraq.'
L. Julius, The Jewish Chronicle, May 31, 2011 11:31
There was a frenzied banging on the front door. When my mother answered it, she recognised her aunt's Jewish cook, ashen-faced, pleading to be let in: "I was on a bus, and the Muslims were pulling the Jewish passengers out and killing them. I said I was a Christian." A month earlier, pro-Nazi officers led by Rashid Ali al-Ghailani, had staged a successful coup in Iraq. The German-backed Rashid Ali and his men were soon routed by British troops - but not before they had incited murder and mayhem against the Jewish "fifth column".
Seventy years ago, on June 1 1941, a group of Jews, wearing their Shavuot best, had ventured out for the first time in weeks to greet the returning pro-British Regent, only to be ambushed by an armed Arab mob. Terrified Jews barricaded themselves inside their houses, or ran for their lives across the flat rooftops.
The rioting went on for two days: around 180 Jews died in Baghdad and Basra (the exact figure is not known); hundreds were wounded, 900 homes and 586 Jewish-owned shops were destroyed; there was looting, rape and mutilation. Stories abound of babies murdered and Jewish hospital patients refused treatment or poisoned. The dead were hurriedly buried in a mass grave.
Jews recognised some assailants - the butcher, the gardener. But some brave Arabs saved Jews. My aunt tells how the neighbours sheltered her until the trouble had died down. The neighbour was a prominent Nazi, but his wife was "a lady --- she even made the beds for us," my aunt recounts.
The Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession") marked an irrevocable break between Jews and Arabs in Iraq and paved the way for the dissolution of the 2,600-year-old Jewish community barely 10 years later.
"The screams reached the ambassador at a candlelit dinner"
A question mark hovers over the role of the British - encamped on the city outskirts, they delayed intervening until the looting had spread to Muslim districts. Yet the victims' screams reached the British ambassador, Cornwallis, who was enjoying a candlelit dinner and a game of bridge.
Loyal and productive citizens comprising a fifth of Baghdad, the Jews had not known anything like the Farhud in living memory. Before the victims' blood was dry, army and police warned the Jews not to testify against the murderers and looters. Even the official report on the massacre was not published until 1958.
Despite their deep roots, the Jews understood that they would never, along with other minorities, be an integral part of an independent Iraq. Fear of a second Farhud was a major reason why 90 per cent of Iraq's Jewish community fled to Israel after 1948.
But the Farhud was not just another anti-Jewish pogrom.The Nazi supporters who planned it had a more sinister objective: the round-up, deportation and extermination in desert camps of the Baghdadi Jews.
The inspiration behind the coup, and the Farhud itself, came not from Baghdad, but Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, sought refuge in Iraq in 1939 with 400 Palestinian émigrés. Together, they whipped up local anti-Jewish feeling. An illiterate populace imbibed bigotry through Nazi radio propaganda. Days before the Farhud broke out, the Nazi youth movement, the Futuwa, went around daubing Jewish homes with a red palm print. Yunis al-Sabawi, who, together with the Mufti and Rashid Ali, spent the rest of the war in Berlin, instructed the Jews to stay in their homes so that they could more easily be rounded up.
The Farhud cemented a wartime Arab-Nazi alliance designed to rid Palestine, and the world, of the Jews. The Mufti's postwar legacy endured. The uprooting of the 140,000 Jews of Iraq followed a Nazi pattern of victimisation - dismantlement, dispossession and expulsion. Nuremberg-style laws criminalised Zionism, freezing Jewish bank accounts, instituting quotas and restrictions on jobs and movement. The result was the exodus of nearly a million Jews from the Arab world.
More Jews died than on Kristallnacht, yet the Farhud has not become part of Holocaust memory. Indeed, the Washington Holocaust Museum had to be vigorously lobbied to include the Farhud as a Holocaust event.
Nazism gave ideological inspiration both to Arab secular parties and the Muslim Brotherhood (Gaza branch: Hamas). The unremitting campaign to destroy Israel is simply a manifestation of the genocidal intentions of Arab nationalism and Islamism. The demons awakened by the Farhud are still with us today.
https://www.thejc.com/comment/opinion/farhud-a-slaughter-in-iraq-1.23440
'Farhud memories: Baghdad's 1941 slaughter of the Jews,'
By Sarah Ehrlich Reporter, Witness
BBC, 1 June 2011
On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.
[Image caption: Steve Acre witnessed the bravery of his Muslim landlord from a palm tree]
Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.
Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.
The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). It spelt the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon. There are contemporary reports of up to 180 people killed, but some sources put the number much higher. The Israeli-based Babylonian Heritage Museum says about another 600 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.
"On the first night of Shavuot we usually go to synagogue and stay up all night studying Torah," says Haddad, now a veteran ophthalmologist in New York.
"Suddenly we heard screams, 'Allah Allah!' and shots were fired. We went out to the roof to see what's happening, we saw fires, we saw people on the roofs in the ghetto screaming, begging God to help them."
The violence continued through the night. A red hand sign, or hamsa, had been painted on Jewish homes, to mark them out. Families had to defend themselves by whatever means they could.
Haddad remembers the marauders coming down his street at dawn, and watching them from the roof as they looted his neighbour's house.
"My father had a dagger in his hand and a pipe to prevent people from attacking us on the roof. An idea came to me and I took some bricks from breaking the walls and started throwing them. Other kids came with me and began throwing rocks on these people.
"And when we hit somebody and they began to bleed, they began screaming 'Allah!' and they left. And they left the loot behind them."
Some families bribed policemen to stand guard, paying half a dinar for each bullet fired. Others owe their lives to Muslims who took great risks to protect them.
Woman's breast
In a nearby street in a mixed Jewish and Muslim quarter, Steve Acre lived with his widowed mother and eight siblings in a house owned by a Muslim.
Acre, now 79 and living in Montreal, climbed a palm tree in the courtyard when the violence began. He still remembers the cry "Cutal al yehud" which translates as "slaughter the Jews".
From the tree he could see the landlord sitting in front of the house.
"When the mob came he talked to them. He told them that we are orphans who took refuge in his house and they cannot touch us. If they want us they have to kill him. So lucky for us, the mob moved away, moved to other houses," he remembers.
The men then crossed the street and screams began to emanate from the house of his mother's best friend.
"Later lots of men came outside and set the house on fire. And the men were shouting like from joy, in jubilation holding up something that looked like a slab of meat in their hands.
"Then I found out, it was a woman's breast they were carrying - they cut her breast off and tortured her before they killed her, my mother's best friend, Sabicha."
Until the Farhud, Baghdad had been a model of peaceful coexistence for Jews and Arabs. Jews made up about one in three of the city's population in 1941, and most saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second.
Nazi tide
So what caused this terrible turn of events?
[Image caption The Grand Mufti and Hitler, pictured, were closely linked with Rashid Ali]
A month earlier, a pro-Nazi lawyer Rashid Ali al-Gilani, had overthrown Iraq's royal family, and started broadcasting Nazi propaganda on the radio.
But when an attack on a British Air Force base outside Baghdad ended in humiliating failure, he was forced to flee. The Farhud took place in the power vacuum that followed.
In a tragic twist to the tale, it turns out the British Army could have intervened to halt the violence. On 1 June, British cavalry were just eight miles from the city, having raced 600 miles from Palestine and Egypt under orders to prevent Iraqi oil falling into Nazi hands.
"To Britain's shame, the army was stood down," says historian Tony Rocca, co-author with Farhud survivor Violette Samash of the book, Memories of Eden.
"Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Britain's ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay in direct insubordination to express orders from Winston Churchill that they should take the city and secure its safety. Instead, Sir Kinahan went back to his residence had a candlelight dinner and played a game of bridge."
A move to halt the pogrom was finally taken by the Mayor of Baghdad and police loyal to the Iraqi monarchy, who imposed a curfew at 5pm on 2 June.
After the Farhud, life changed drastically for the city's Jews. Up to that point Haddad had had many Muslim friends.
"Suddenly I changed my attitude. I didn't feel any more Iraqi. I felt I'm a Jew and I vowed that I wanted to kill an Arab," he says.
One day, swimming in the River Tigris, he encountered a drowning man, and instinctively helped him to the shore.
"When I came home I was shook up. Not because I saved the guy but because I didn't follow my vow to kill an Arab. And when I went to see the rabbi, he said, 'You can't make a vow to kill. You can only make a vow to help.'
"That's what stimulated me to go into medicine, actually. I knew that I want to save lives, not to kill people."
Lingering distrust The anti-Semitism that Hitler had successfully exported to Iraq made life unbearable for the Jewish community. There were frequent arrests on false charges of spying and public hangings of prominent Jews.
Morris Zebaida, a survivor who now lives in London, says: "We learnt to live like mice. If we didn't, we would be spat upon or arrested."
In 1950, Jews were finally allowed to leave, on condition they give up all their property and assets, including their bank accounts. By 1952, only 2,000 of 150,000 were left.
Acre and Haddad still feel a lingering distrust of the British, because of their failure to stop the violence.
For Haddad, another legacy of the Farhud is a contradictory attitude to Iraqi Muslims. He has operated on injured Iraqis free of charge, has visited Iraq as an adviser to the government, and is described by Iraq's ambassador in Washington as "the best Iraqi I know". But while he numbers some Iraqi Muslims among his friends, he remains on his guard in the presence of others.
"I have this feeling, a sort of distrust, that the Farhud created," he says. "It's an emotional thing that you cannot eradicate that easily."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13610702
'Remembering the Farhud massacre of June 1941,'
Edwin Black/Guest columnist, May 31, 2015, Winston-Salem Journal Now
'Violent dispossession.' In an Arabic dialect, the word is Farhud. For decades after it occurred, many thought the nightmare was a sudden and unexpected convulsion that afflicted the Iraqi Jewish community, one that lived in that land for some 2,600 years. But in truth, the wild rape and killing spree of June 1-2, 1941 was not unexpected.
Soon after Hitler took power in 1933, Germany's chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, Nazi operatives, acquired the newspaper Al-Alem Al Arabi, converting it into a Nazi organ that published an Arabic translation of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in installments. Radio Berlin beamed anti-Jewish Arabic programs across the Middle East. The Nazi ideology of Jewish conspiracy and international manipulation was widely adopted in Iraqi society, especially within the framework of the Palestine problem that dominated Iraqi politics.
As Arab Nationalism and Hitlerism fused, numerous Nazi-style youth clubs began springing up in Iraq. One pivotal group known as Futuwwa was nothing less than a clone of the Hitler Youth. In 1938, Futuwwa members were required to attend a candlelight Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. When the delegation came back from Germany, a common chant in Arabic was, "Long live Hitler, the killer of insects and Jews."
By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and a coterie of transnational Palestinian agitators had thoroughly permeated Baghdad's ruling circles.
By April 1, 1941, with World War II in full swing, a group of pro-Nazi Iraqi military men known as the Golden Square staged a coup, ousting the British-dominated government. Quickly, the Golden Square welded Iraqi actions to Berlin's iron will. Why did they become partners? The Golden Square wanted Germany to destroy the British and Jewish presence in their country. The Third Reich craved what was beneath the ground oil.
On June 1, British authority was nominally restored, but still withdrawn beyond the outskirts of Baghdad. During the few hours surrounding the British-controlled regent's return, a power vacuum existed in the country. It resulted in the bloodbath of June 1-2 that became known as the Farhud.
Lists of Jews had already been compiled. Jewish homes had been marked in advance with a blood-red palm prints. The text announcing the mass murder was already prepared and scheduled for radio broadcast.
But Jewish leaders who learned of the impending disaster begged for mercy from the temporary local mayoral authorities, who successfully engineered the expulsion from Baghdad of the massacre planners. The radio broadcast on May 31 merely announced that the British-appointed regent would return to his palace from his temporary refuge in Trans-Jordan.
Baghdad's Jews had every reason to celebrate. June 1 was the joyous holy day of Shavuot, commemorating when the Law was given to the Jews on Mt. Sinai. Baghdad's Jews thought stability had returned to their 2,600-year existence in Iraq. They were so wrong.
At about 3 p.m. that June 1, Regent 'Abd al-Ilah landed at the Baghdad airport. He was making his way across al-Khurr Bridge when a contingent of Baghdadi Jews went out to greet him. As the group came to the bridge, they encountered a contingent of dejected soldiers just returning from their dismal surrender to British forces. The mere sight of these Jews, bedecked in festive holiday garb, was enough to enrage the soldiers.
Suddenly, the Jews were viciously attacked with knives and axes. Several were hacked to death right then and there on the bridge. The planned systematic extermination, now foiled, broke down into a spontaneous citywide slaughter.
Baghdad became a fast-moving hell. Frenzied mobs raced throughout the city and murdered Jews openly on the streets. Women were raped as their horrified families looked on. Infants were killed in front of their parents. Home and stores were emptied and then burned. Gunshots and screams electrified the city for hours upon hours. Beheadings, torsos sliced open, babies dismembered, horrid tortures, and mutilations were widespread. Severed limbs were waved here and there as hideous trophies.
In home after home, furniture was moved up against the door to create a barricade. As Arabs breached the entrances, many families escaped to the roof, one step ahead.
Fleeing Jews jumped from one roof to another. In some instances, parents and siblings threw children down from roofs to waiting blankets below.
Women were defiled everywhere. Arabs broke into the girl's school and the students were raped — endlessly. Young or old, Jewish females were set upon and mercilessly gang raped and often mutilated.
In truth, no one will ever know many were murdered or maimed during those two dark days. One Iraq historian suggested as many as 600 were murdered during the overnight rampage.
Farhud 'in Arabic, the word means violent dispossession. It was a word the Jews of wartime Europe never knew. Holocaust' it was a word the Jews of wartime Iraq never knew. But soon they would all know their meaning regardless of the language they spoke. After the events of June 1-2, 1941, both words came together.
Edwin Black is the author The Farhud -- Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust and other books. Today, he will lead a commemoration of International Farhud Day at a globally streamed event at the United Nations
https://journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/edwin-black-remembering-the-farhud-massacre-of-june-1941/article_8c241c06-062c-11e5-b8dd-7f5856f9fa31.html
When Nazism met Arabism
When Baghdad Burned: The June 1941 Farhud Massacre
The fusion of Nazism and Arab nationalism in the Middle East spelled unimaginable horror for Iraq's ancient Jewish community.
E. Black , Israel National News, 27/05/15 16:44
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/195902
Yad Vashem - Iraq
... In the pogrom, horrific acts of cruelty were committed: murder and genocide. Trampled babies' organs, the elderly and women, rape, synagogue abuse and desecration of Torah scrolls.
https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201867.pdf
The Farhud | Holocaust Encyclopedia
[...]
The rise of this pro-German government threatened the Jews in Iraq. Nazi influence and antisemitism already were widespread in Iraq, due in large part to the German legation's presence in Baghdad as well as influential Nazi propaganda, which took the form of Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin. Mein Kampf had been translated into Arabic by Yunis al-Sab'awi, and was published in a local newspaper, Al Alam al Arabi (The Arab World), in Baghdad during 1933-1934. Yunis al-Sab'awi also headed the Futtuwa, a pre-military youth movement influenced by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in Germany. After the coup d'etat, al-Sab'awi became a minister in the new Iraqi government.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud
78 Years to Farhud: The Forgotten Massacre of Iraqi Jewry
by Yaara Zered - 02-06-2019
These were two days of the 1941 Shavuoth [Pentecost] in Iraq. The Farhud was a brutal massacre of Jews who returned from prayer or spent time with their families, two days marking the end of a glorious, oldest community outside the Land of Israel about 2,600 years old
... Farhud, the horrific days when Iraqi Jews were laughtered on the streets, beaten, stabbed and run over to death, women raped, children and the elderly dismembered.
In places close to the river and in houses where there were wells, the children were thrown into the water in front of the parents. Jews climbed on the roofs of houses and fled from roof to roof.
Torah scrolls were desecrated and synagogues were damaged, Jewish shops were marked in red, looted and set on fire, and houses were also looted, sometimes burned, sometimes flooded.
These were two days of the 1941 Pentecost in Iraq. The Farhud was a brutal massacre of Jews returning from prayer or spending time with their families, the boiling point for harassment of Iraqi Jews, racial laws and mass layoffs. These were also the days that marked the end of a glorious Kehiloh, the oldest outside the Land of Israel about 2,600 years old. An educated and prosperous community, it had ministers and MPs, government officials in key positions, wealthy merchants, economists, accountants, lawyers, intellectuals, musicians and intellectuals.
Evidence of those damned days shows the atrocities that took place there, the cries in the streets that were washed with Jewish blood, lots of incited Arabs who searched and located Jews in homes, synagogues and streets and stabbed them with daggers, policemen and soldiers joining the rioters and firing firearms, pregnant women with torn abdomen The gold bracelets and at the end, a huge mass grave where the bodies of the Jews were piled.
The Farhud took place during years of continuous pro-Nazi propaganda in Iraq, one of the people who led and fed the daily incitement was Mufti Amin al-Husseini, a friend of Hitler and Eichmann, who fled Israel and then Lebanon (disguised as a woman) and arrived in Iraq in 1939. His status.
He received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Iraqi House of Representatives out of "concern for the Palestinian cause," money that helped him connect well with Iraqi government officials, military and police officials, and intellectuals. In those years, al-Husseini tightened his ties with senior members of the Nazi government in Germany and with the German ambassador to Iraq (Fritz Grobba) and even received grants of hundreds of thousands of marks from the Nazis.
In a letter he sent to Husseini to Hitler in early 1941, he emphasized the sympathy and admiration that the Arab people have for Hitler and the German people. He constantly engaged in continuous and violent incitement against the Jews, making sure to present Nazi Germany as the "defender of the Muslim world" and the Jews as "dangerous enemies." Cooperation with the Nazis also led to the spread of anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic throughout Iraq, public radio, newspapers, posters and demonstrations, messages were also circulated in the Iraqi parliament and mosques began to preach against the Jewish enemy. All this in parallel with the racial laws against the Jews, mass dismissals from public positions, discrimination and harassment in the streets.
According to official data in the State of Israel, 179 Jews were killed in the riots, over 2,000 were injured, over 200 children were orphaned and property of about 50,000 Jews was looted. The figure of the 179 murdered is usually attached to the word "at least" because no one has examined in depth how many were killed in the riots (the data adopted by the State of Israel are mostly based on the Iraqi Commission of Inquiry). In fact, even Yad Vashem publishes the names in their database Who have never researched the subject.
"There are also half-names," a representative of our glorious museum once told me, "we have not researched," thank other representatives.
According to other historians, there is an estimate of hundreds of murdered (for example, the historian Eli Kadouri, who estimated that there were about 600 murdered), according to authoritative evidence, there are about 1,000 murdered.
https://mobile.srugim.co.il/article/345585
Shmuel Moreh: 'Hatred of Jews and riots in Iraq: a collection of studies and documents.'
Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Institute for the Study of Babylonian Jewry, 1992. p.196
Yossi Ozer (Jerusalem, 1952) in his poem "Farhud" mentions, as a hearing witness from his parents, also the attack on the Jewish doctors and patients of the Jewish hospital "Meir Elias":
"The two Arab guards of the beautiful Meir Elias Hospital in Baghdad, | one black-skinned and the other white begging the crowd, their voices are squashed in the mob's rush.And the poet concludes in a lesson that these cruel riots left no room for joy in the hearts of the Jews of Baghdad. The report of the Iraqi government commission of inquiry set up to investigate the disturbances confirms the content of Yossi Ezer's poem. There, too, it's mentioned that the mob had stormed the hospital and demanded the exit of the doctors, the nurses.
And Rina, Rina the nurse will watch a crowd of burglars and slaughter doctors / and slaughter clerks and slaughter patients and slaughter /
Even in the white clothes her skin was whiter than snow, now they were frozen from ice even more, from begging from a stone."
https://books.google.com/books?id=18BtAAAAMAAJ&q=%D7%94%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%AA
Witnesses to Iraq’s Farhud
Over the first two days of June 1941, countless numbers of Jewish women in Baghdad were raped, more than 2,000 Jews were injured — many of them mutilated — and 900 homes, as well as 586 Jewish-owned businesses, were looted. All told, according to Iraqi-born historian Elie Kedourie, 600 Jews, including children and infants, were slaughtered. This Nazi-inspired pogrom is known as the Farhud, which in Kurdish means violent dispossession, and it marked the beginning of the destruction of the Iraq’s 2,600-year-old Jewish community, which beforehand had numbered more than 75,000 in Baghdad and 120,000 throughout Iraq.
The Nazis’ influence in Iraq can be traced back to 1933, when Hitler first came to power, which was just a year after Iraq gained its independence from Britain. Excerpts from “Mein Kampf” began appearing serially in Iraqi’s newspaper Al-Alem Al Arabi (The Arabic World), which had been purchased by Germany’s ambassador to Iraq, Dr. Fritz Grobba. A youth organization, Al Fatwaa, similar to the Hitler Youth, was formed, and Radio Berlin began to broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic.
Pro-Nazis had taken power of the Iraqi government just two months before in a coup staged by Gen. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and four generals, called the Golden Square, with support from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Nazi collaborator in exile in Baghdad. They overthrew the former, pro-British government and exiled the young King Faisal II and his regent, Prince Abdul Ilah. Al-Gaylani, intent on controlling Iraq’s oil fields for Germany, staged the takeover, in league with the Nazis and the Grand Mufti. But Britain, dependent on Iraq’s oil, returned fire by sending in additional troops, and, after a month of fighting, emerged victorious. The British army then stationed itself outside Baghdad, and on May 30, al-Gaylani, his generals and the Grand Mufti fled the country.
https://globaljews.org/articles/world/witnesses-to-iraqs-farhud/
Witnesses to Iraq’s Farhud
by Jane Ulman.
May 20, 2015
http://web.archive.org/web/20150524052013/
http://www.jewishjournal.com/shavuot/article/witnesses_to_iraqs_farhud
The story of the "Farhud" on Pentecost in Iraq.
BSD
The "Farhud" (pogrom) that was on Pentecost in Iraq.
Added a chilling story about the days of the Farhud received from Mr. Yosef Nimrodi the Sixteenth.
Farhud, the full story.
The sword threatens the necks of Iraqi Jews.
In 1932, the British Mandate ended and Iraq became an independent state and was accepted into the League of Nations in Geneva. Unlike his father, Ghazi was an extremist and unstable man, leaning towards Nazi Germany. The Nazis became housemates in Iraq. Nazi Dr. Grobbe, who was also the head of Nazi intelligence in the Middle East, was appointed the first German ambassador to Iraq. At the same time, Gazi allowed nationalist army officers to occupy key positions in his court. They gained power and great influence in the governmental system, this had a severe impact on the government's policy towards the Jews.
Nazi propaganda was now overt, Iraqi teachers were sent to Germany to study the doctrine of hatred. Al-Futuwwa and Katab al-Shabab youth movements were formed, which became the spearhead of hatred. Iraqi Nationalists gradually spread among many young people, incited openly against the Jews. (Chapter evidence can be read testimonies of Jews who were students then in schools, the sheer hatred, spread among some teachers in schools.)
In 1936, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusadqlem and his apostles, arrived in Iraq and began Palestinian propaganda against the Jews. The Mufti proposed to Hitler to apply the "final solution" on the Jews in Arab land.
The press is full of incitement articles, which encouraged the owners of the companies not to employ Jews. In 1936, in parallel with the Arab uprising in Israel and under its influence, 10 Jews were murdered on the streets of Baghdad and in the countryside, the government did not even investigate to check who the killers were, their blood was the no man's land. At that time a "committee for the rescue of Palestine" was set up which organized mass rallies in the mosques and all were directed against the Jews.
In 1941, an officers' revolution took place, headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, the pro-Nazi, the Regent, 'Abd al-Ilah, the uncle of [youngsger] King Faisal II, and the other monarchs fled. The British, fearing that Iraq would become a Nazi base, reoccupied Iraq, Rashid Ali fled while the British stood on the outskirts of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris, a few hours away from the city.
The secretary of the community committee said that a few days before the massacre, they began to mark the homes of the Jews with a red cap and at the same time Chief Rabbi Sasson Kadouri was summoned to the governor of Baghdad. During the conversation, the rabbi was told that the authorities would protect the Jews and that it was "recommended" for Jews to lock themselves in their homes during the holiday. When the secretary of the community committee heard the rabbi's words, he warned him of a trap.
In the period between Rashid Ali's escape and the British entry, a terrible massacre took place. Some believe that the British could have entered and prevented this, but they preferred to stay on the outskirts of the city and wait.
The massacre of the Jews of Baghdad on Shavuot
It was the signal for carnage, where to the Iraqi Jews of Baghdad known as the "Farhood," the first day for Shavuot, mobs and police officers and army, who raided their uniforms were mingled into the mob and attacked the Jews wherever they were, slaughtered and robbed.
Arabs snathed off Jews off buses and slaughtered them, beheaded pregnant women and killed their Waldens.
There are various testimonies regarding the number of murdered. According to some testimonies the results of the massacre were: 135 killed, others talking about 180 and more, 2,000 wounded. (It is known that the victims were many but the heads of the community were asked to report a smaller number to prevent riots). Thousands of homes were burned and huge property was looted. For 2 days a massacre took place and there was no one to stop it. Most of the massacre was on the Jews of Baghdad.
The horrific massacre left no room for doubt, Jewish security in their ability to continue to exist in Iraq faded.
Disruptions proved to them that all their contribution of loyalty to Iraq would be of no use. They felt betrayed by the Iraqis and the British, who helped them so much. Why are they, the loyal citizens, who have never betrayed or done anything against the Iraqi people and homeland, who, having contributed their talent and energy to the Iraqi people and who had not until then seen themselves Zionists in the sense of leaving and immigrating to Israel received such terrible treatment.
These riots were a turning point for many young people. Until then, despite narrowing their steps, they found alternatives. For example, when it was limited the entry of Jewish students in high schools and universities send their children Jewish community's educational institutions and study overseas, did not imagine, that their lives will be in danger.
After the riots Jews reacted in three ways:
Some of them look their way escape from Iraq to any other country. An illegal individual escape has begun.
Some went to set up self-defense organizations were established .: Two Small "Free Jewish Committee and rescue Youth Organization".
Some went to the communist underground. They saw this party that carved the banner of equality regardless of religion and race, a solution to the plight of those with beat down Jews in an Arab country.
However, The majority of the Jews returned to rebuild the ruins under the auspices of the British government. In these years until the end of World War II, the economic situation in Iraq greatly improved, both for the Muslim population and for the Jews.
Received from Mr. Yosef Nimrodi:
At the time of the Farhud we lived in a devout Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad. There were only 5 Jewish houses in the alley and the five houses were separated. At that time, my uncle, my father's brother who was a discharged officer from the Iraqi army, lived with us. He had guns and other weapons. In addition, a few days before the riot, he brought oil bottles, soap and water and of course stones to our roof.
On the evening of Farhud, my father's nephew came to us, excited and scared. He shivered all over and said that in the Jewish neighborhood a lot of people attacked Jewish houses and animals, looted and beat and stabbed every Jew who came their way. He asked to stay with us because he knew that the uncle would protect us.
On the morning of the attack, we were getting ready to go to the circumcision of my cousin, Mama's brother. Through the window we saw dozens of people armed with knives, axes and firearms, some of them carrying objects and furniture that theh had looted from Jewish homes.
I saw a woman carrying a baby's foot in her hand with a gold bracelet. They all stormed the 5 houses. The uncle pulled out the guns and went up to the roof. We went down to the stuffy little basement. A few minutes later all the neighbors went through the roofs to our roof and from there went down and joined us in the basement.
The boiler fired down towards the attackers several shots, mixing water with soap and oil and pouring on their heads. Many of the crowd slipped and fell and were run over under the feet of the crowd.
An hour later some of the attackers went up to our roof and evacuated the boiler. He told them that he was a devout Muslim and that he was an officer in the Iraqi army that was stationed in Krakow in the north. He said: I came to Baghdad and no Muslim wanted to help me. These good Jews took me home with them, helped me to adapt and supported me in every way he added Muhammad commanded us to protect the weak and those who helped us and therefore I will not allow any of you to harm these Jews. They told him that they did not believe him to be a Muslim and an officer: if you are really a Muslim and an officer, show us proof. Pray here before us. The uncle told them to wait until he brought the shtil and the rosary and prayed before them.
They left after emptying the neighbors' 4 more homes of all property.
The situation lasted all night and the boiler was on the roof and we were with the neighbors north in the stuffy basement, of course there was no food and no drinking. In the morning the English army took over and made order. The uncle suggested he stay to look after the house and we would take Arbana cart and drive to the police where all the survivors gathered.
I was 10. The sights I saw on the streets cannot be forgotten. Corpse organs are scattered in every corner, here babies' feet, there a woman's breasts to dismembered organs scattered among the broken and blood-soaked dishes and furniture. A few days later we left the house in the cursed neighborhood and moved to the respectable Alsace neighborhood.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071017003303/http://hazzan.qpon.co.il/Front/Newsnet/reports.asp?reportId=197404
Jun 1, 2020
WJC (@WorldJewishCong) Tweeted:
It started on June 1st, 1941. For two days, a mob in Baghdad went from door to door to Jewish homes - killing, raping, looting. The pogrom, known as the Farhud in Arabic, was a shocking turning point for the Iraqi Jewish community. Within a decade, most of them fled the country.
https://t.co/sm6ppszotK
https://twitter.com/WorldJewishCong/status/1267454603357908993?s=20
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