1941 жылғы Бағдаттағы еврейлерге қарсы қырғын

1941 anti Jewish massacre in Baghdad, Iraq

The Farhud took place during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. It has been referred to as a pogrom which was part of the Holocaust, though its inclusion as such has been disputed. The event spurred the migration of Iraqi Jews out of the country, although a direct connection to the 1951–1952 Jewish exodus from Iraq is also disputed, as many Jews who left Iraq immediately following the Farhud later returned to the country, and permanent Jewish emigration out of Iraq did not accelerate significantly until 1950–1951. According to Hayyim Cohen, the Farhud "was the only [such event] known to the Jews of Iraq, at least during their last hundred years of life there". Historian Edy Cohen writes that up until the Farhud, Jews had enjoyed relatively favorable conditions and coexistence with Muslims in Iraq.

After the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World WarI, the League of Nations granted the mandate of Iraq to Britain. After King Ghazi who inherited the throne of FaisalI, died in a 1939 car accident, Britain installed 'Abd al Ilah as Iraq's governing regent. By 1941 the approximately 150,000 Iraqi Jews played active roles in many aspects of Iraqi life, including farming, banking, commerce and the government bureaucracy.

Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al Gaylani was appointed Prime Minister again in 1940, and attempted to ally with the Axis powers in order to remove the remaining British influence in the country. Much of the population had retained significant anti British sentiments since the 1920 Iraqi revolt, although the Jewish population was viewed as pro British during World WarII, contributing to the separation of the Muslim and Jewish communities. In addition, between 1932 and 1941, the German embassy in Iraq, headed by Dr. Fritz Grobba, significantly supported antisemitic and fascist movements. Intellectuals and army officers were invited to Germany as guests of the Nazi party, and antisemitic material was published in the newspapers. The German embassy purchased the newspaper Al alam Al arabi ("The Arab world") which published, in addition to antisemitic propaganda, a translation of Mein Kampf in Arabic. The German embassy also supported the establishment of Al Fatwa, a youth organization based upon the model of the Hitler Youth.

In 1941 a group of pro Nazi Iraqi officers, known as the "Golden Square" and led by General Rashid Ali, overthrew Regent Abdul Ilah on April 1 after staging a successful coup. The coup had significant popular support, particularly in Baghdad. Historian Orit Bashkin writes that "All, apparently, yearned for the departure of the British after two long decades of interference in Iraqi affairs". Iraq's new government then was quickly involved in confrontation with the British over the terms of the military treaty forced on Iraq at independence. The treaty gave the British unlimited rights to base troops in Iraq and transit troops through Iraq. The British arranged to land large numbers of soldiers from India in Iraq to force the country to show its intentions. Iraq refused to let them land and confrontations afterward occurred both near Basra in the south and to the west of Baghdad near the British base complex and airfield. The Germans dispatched a group of 26 heavy fighters to aid in a futile air attack on the British airbase at Habbaniya which accomplished nothing. Winston Churchill sent a telegram to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him that if the Middle East fell to Germany, victory against the Nazis would be a "hard, long and bleak proposition" given that Hitler would have access to the oil reserves there. The telegram dealt with the larger issues of war in the Middle East rather than Iraq exclusively. On May 25 Hitler issued his Order 30, stepping up German offensive operations: "The Arab Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally against England. In this connection special importance is attached to the liberation of Iraq I have therefore decided to move forward in the Middle East by supporting Iraq." On May 30 the British organized force called Kingcol led by Brigadier J. J. Kingstone reached Baghdad, causing the "Golden Square" and their supporters to escape via Iran to Germany. Kingcol included some elements of the Arab Legion led by Major John Bagot Glubb known as Glubb Pasha. On May 31 Regent Abdul Illah prepared to fly back into Baghdad to reclaim his leadership. To avoid the impression of a British organized countercoup, the regent entered Baghdad without a British escort. Michael Eppel, in his book "The Palestinian Conflict in Modern Iraq", blames the Farhud on the influence of German ideology on the Iraqi people, as well as extreme nationalism, both of which were heightened by the Golden Square coup.

Sami Michael, a witness to the Farhud, testified: "Antisemite propaganda was broadcast routinely by the local radio and Radio Berlin in Arabic. Various anti Jewish slogans were written on walls on the way to school, such as "Hitler was killing the Jewish germs". Shops owned by Muslims had 'Muslim' written on them, so they would not be damaged in the case of anti Jewish riots." שלום דרוויש, the secretary of the Jewish community in Baghdad, testified that several days before the Farhud, the homes of Jews were marked with a red palm print ("Hamsa"), by al Futuwa youth. Al Sabawi also instructed Jews in Baghdad to pack suitcases and to wait to be taken to "detention camps" "for their own safety". During the fall of the Rashid Ali government, false rumors were circulated that Jews used radios to signal the Royal Air Force and distributed British propaganda.

The exact number of victims is uncertain. With respect to Jewish victims, some sources say that about 180 Jewish Iraqis were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed. Other accounts state that nearly 200 were killed and more than 2,000 injured, while 900 Jewish homes and hundreds of Jewish owned shops destroyed and looted. The Israeli based Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center maintains that in addition to 180 identified victims, around another 600 unidentified ones were buried in a mass grave. Zvi Zameret of Israel's Education Ministry says 180 were killed and 700 wounded. Bashkin writes that "a constant element that appears in most accounts of the Farhud is a narrative relating to a good neighbor [ ] Judging by the lists of the Jewish dead, it seems that Jews in mixed neighborhoods stood a better chance of surviving the riots than those in uniformly Jewish areas." According to documents discovered from the Iraqi Jewish Archive, more than a thousand Jews were murdered or disappeared. When the forces loyal to the regent entered to restore order, many rioters were killed. The Iraqi Commission Report noted that: "After some delay the Regent arranged for the dispatch of troops to take control There was no more aimless firing into the air; their machine guns swept the streets clear of people and quickly put a stop to looting and rioting." The British Ambassador noted that the second day was more violent than the first, and that "Iraqi troops killed as many rioters as the rioters killed Jews." The Iraqi Commission Report estimated the total number of Jews and Muslims killed at 130. The monarchist government acted quickly to suppress supporters of Rashid Ali. Many Iraqis were exiled as a result, and hundreds were jailed. Military courts were convened to try the rioters and those responsible for the coup. A number of men, including Yunis al Sabawi and multiple Iraqi Army officers and policemen, were legally sentenced to death in consequence of the violence by the newly established pro British Iraqi government.

In some accounts the Farhud marked the turning point for Iraq's Jews. Other historians, however, see the pivotal moment for the Iraqi Jewish community much later, between 1948 and 1951, since Jewish communities prospered along with the rest of the country throughout most of the 1940s,

It was only after the Iraqi government initiated a policy shift towards the Iraqi Jews in 1948, curtailing their civil rights and firing many Jewish state employees, that the Farhud began to be regarded as more than just an outburst of violence instigated by foreign influences, namely Nazi propaganda. On October 23, 1948, Shafiq Ades, a respected Jewish businessman, was publicly hanged in Basra on charges of selling weapons to Israel and the Iraqi Communist Party, despite the fact he was an outspoken anti Zionist. The event increased the sense of insecurity among Jews. The Jewish community general sentiment was that if a man as well connected and powerful as Shafiq Ades could be eliminated by the state, other Jews would not be protected any longer, and the Farhud was no longer seen as an isolated incident. During this period, the Iraqi Jewish community became increasingly fearful.

A monument, called Prayer, located in Ramat Gan, is in memory of the Jews who were killed in Iraq during the Farhud and in the 1960s. 1 June 2015, was the first International Farhud Day at the United Nations.