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January 28, 2005/Shevat 18 5765, Vol. 57, No. 22
Sephardim: Baghdad pogrom part of Holocaust
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
LOS ANGELES - Thirteen-year-old Maurice Zekaria looked out through the curtained window of his house in central Baghdad and saw Iraqi men dragging two Jewish girls down the street by their hair.
He saw Iraqis attacking Jewish men with axes and hammers, and he saw heavy smoke rising from torched Jewish businesses and homes.
It was June 1, 1941 - Shavuot - and over the next 48 hours, Muslim rioters killed some 180 Jews and injured 240, raped Jewish women and burned and looted 586 Jewish stores and homes.
"That was the 'Farhud,'" said Zekaria, 76, a Los Angeles resident and founding CEO of a national chain of clothing stores.
The Farhud, an Arabic term for "violent dispossession," was put down by British troops after two days of rampaging by pro-Nazi Arabs. But it marked the beginning of the end of the 2,600-year-old Iraqi Jewish community, just as Kristallnacht in 1938 signaled the upcoming destruction of German Jewry.
"Everybody has heard of Kristallnacht, but nobody has heard of Farhud," Zekaria said.
His complaint reflects the long-standing frustration of Sephardic leaders and scholars over general ignorance of the victimization of Sephardic Jews in Arab countries and the Balkans during the Holocaust era.
According to recent studies, almost 200,000 Sephardic Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis, mainly in Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Pogroms in Arab countries - many orchestrated, as in the Farhud, by the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Hitler ally - added to the toll.
To remedy the gap in the historical record, a small group of American Sephardic leaders met with Holocaust historians last week to launch the Farhud Recognition Project.
Still in its formative stage, the FRP seeks to have the fate of the Sephardic communities in Iraq, other Arab countries and in Europe included in study and teaching of the Holocaust in the United States, Israel and across the world.
"We must recognize that Hitler wanted to kill not just the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, but all Jews everywhere," said Shelomo Alfassa, executive director of the Florida-based International Society for Sephardic Progress.
The L.A. Museum of the Holocaust is planning a traveling exhibit along the Farhud project lines, executive director Rachel Jagoda said.
For further information, visit www.farhud.org or www.bankingonbaghdad.com.
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