The Farhud: What Happened to Iraq’s Jews?

The “Farhud,” Arabic for pogrom or violent dispossession, gripped Iraq’s 2,600 year-old Jewish community during WW2. Inspired and encouraged by the Nazi regime, Iraqis committed acts of horrific violence against Baghdad’s Jews for two days as British forces watched on.

Big Ideas:

1. The Jewish community in Iraq dates back to 586 B.C.E. and for almost 2,600 years was a vibrant center of Jewish life in the Diaspora.
2. After a failed coup against the British in 1941, Iraqi nationalists blamed their Jewish neighbors and brutally destroyed Baghdad’s Jewish community.
3. Life became intolerable for Iraq’s Jews after the creation of Israel in 1948, and Israel absorbed nearly all of Iraq’s Jews.

Essential Questions:

1. How did Nazi propaganda and ideologies get adopted in Iraq and shift Iraq’s perception of the Jewish community?
2. What were the consequences of the Farhud and the persecution that followed for the Jewish community in Iraq?
3. How has the Iraqi Jewish population contributed to modern Israeli society?

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