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This 82nd anniversary of Nazi-advised Iraq's "Farhud" Pogrom - when the Holocaust migrated to the Middle East

"It was Iraq's Kristallnacht," says Edwin Black on the Farhud: the Holocaust-era pogrom against Baghdad's Jews on Shavuot of 1941, 82-years ago.
The Farhud (Photo: London Jewish Museum)

As Edwin Black wrote in, "When the Holocaust Came to the Middle East," on History News Network, May 30, 2018:

Haj Amin al-Husseini greets Bosnian Waffen-SS volunteers with a Nazi salute, November 1943.
"Farhud means violent dispossession. The Farhud was the first bloody step along the tormented path to the ultimate expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from across the Arab world. That systematic expulsion ended centuries of Jewish existence and stature in those lands."
Jews had thrived in Iraq for 2,700 years, a thousand years before Mohammad. But all that came to end when the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the broad Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust that produced a military, economic, political, and ideological common cause with Hitler. 
Although Husseini spearheaded an international pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Islamic movement from India to Central Europe to the Middle East, it was in Baghdad—a 1,000-kilometer drive from Jerusalem— that he launched his robust coordination with the Third Reich.



Edwin Black
The Arabs, led by Husseini, wanted the Jews out of Palestine and Europe’s persecuted Jews kept away from the Middle East. Indeed, Husseini persuasively argued to Hitler that Jews should not be expelled to Palestine but rather to “Poland,” where “they will be under active control.” Translation: Send Jews to the concentration camps. Husseini had visited concentration camps, where he had been hosted by the architect of the genocide, Heinrich Himmler. The Mufti considered Shoah engineer Adolf Eichmann not only a great friend, but a “diamond” among men. 
Nazi lust for oil and Arab hatred of Jews combined synergistically June 1–2, 1941 burning the Farhud into history. Arab soldiers, police, and hooligans, swearing allegiance to the Mufti and Hitler, bolstered by fascist coup plotters known as the Golden Square, ran wild in the streets, raping, shooting, burning, dismembering, and decapitating. Jewish blood flowed through those streets and their screams created echoes that have never faded." Read more:
Iraqi-Jewish refugee, Joseph Samuels recounts how the Nazi connection with the Muslim leaders turned Muslims violently against their neighbors. But Jews like Joe had nowhere to safely flee to until Palestine, beginning 1947. He tells how he migrated to Israel and ultimately to America.


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 sourcewas already prepared and scheduled for radio broadcast. 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 citywidthe slaughter.  (source: Winston-Salem JournalNow

Iraqi Muslima dentist apologizes for Farhud against Jews, searches for former neighbors.


Dr. Bushra Qader, a dentist, living in Dearborn, Michigan was jailed and tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime for speaking truths. She tells the story of her family's Jewish neighbors, whom Muslim leaders expelled for not converting to Islam- and one who did.  (Updated from June 1, 2018).

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