The Farhud: 1941 Pogrom That Killed Hundreds of Baghdad’s Jews

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The Farhud: 1941 Pogrom That…

Jul112020

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of the Farhud, a vicious pogrom against the Jewish community in the Iraqi capital took place in 1941. The Nazi-influenced eruption of violence took the lives of hundreds of Jews in Baghdad and injured thousands of others.

Quote: “During the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families –15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad — suffered directly from the pogrom.” — Holocaust Encyclopedia of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Sources: Wikipedia, Holocaust Encyclopedia

Learn more about the Farhud. >>

Watch “Daniel Khazoom. Farhud (Baghdad Pogrom, 1941). JIMENA Oral History, 2010” [6:11]. >>

Photo: World Jewish Congress

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“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.

The Farhud: 1941 Pogrom That Killed Hundreds of Baghdad’s Jews

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