Seventy Years Ago, There Was A Pogrom In Baghdad…
Seven years before the “Nakba,” there was the Farhud.
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.
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”). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon.
More after the link.