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May 29, 2015 • 11 Sivan 5775

THE JEWISH STARNaso • Candlelighting 8 pm • 516-622-7461 Vol 14, No. 21 • TheJewishStar.com

MARCH ON, NEW YORK!LI celebrates Israel on Sunday

Remembering when Baghdad burned: June 1, 1941

In Arabic, the word is Farhud means “vio-lent dispossession.” It’s a word the Jews of wartime Europe did not know, just as

Holocaust was a word unfamiliar to the Jews of WWII Iraq.

The Farhud of June 1–2, 1941, on the hol-iday of Shavuot, brought murder, rape and destruction to a Jewish community that had

been living in Iraq for some 2,600 years.Soon after Hitler took power in 1933, Ger-

many’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad, German Arab specialist Fritz Grobba, acquired the Christian Iraqi newspaper Al-Alem Al Arabi, converting it into a Nazi organ that published installments of an Arabic translation of Hit-ler’s Mein Kampf. Radio Berlin began beam-ing Arabic programs across the Middle East. The Nazi ideology of Jewish conspiracy and international manipulation was widely ad-opted in Iraqi society.

As Arab Nationalism and Hitlerism fused, numerous Nazi-style youth clubs began springing up in Iraq. One pivotal group,

known as Futuwwa, was nothing less than a clone of the Hitler Youth. In 1938, Futuwwa members were required to attend a candle-light Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. When the delegation came back from Germany, a common chant in Arabic was, “Long live Hit-ler, the killer of insects and Jews.”

By the outbreak of World War II in Sep-tember 1939, the Grand Mufti of Jerusa-lem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and a coterie of transnational Palestinian agitators, had thor-oughly permeated Baghdad’s ruling circles. For example, Taha al-Hashimi, Iraqi Chief of Staff, doubled as the head of the Committee for the Defense of Palestine.

To lure more Arabs to the Nazi cause,Grobba employed such tactics as dispensing lots of cash among politicians and deploying seductive German women among ranking members of the army. German radio broad-casting in Baghdad regularly aired fallaciousreports about non-existent Jewish outragesin Palestine. Grobba, in conjunction with theMufti, cultivated many Iraqis to act as sur-rogate Nazis.

By April 1, 1941, with WWII in full swing, agroup of pro-Nazi Iraqi military men known asthe Golden Square staged a coup, ousting the British-dominated government. Quickly, the

Continued on page 19

EDWIN BLACK

It’s a day when it seems as though all of New York turns out to show its love for Midinat Yisroel.

On Sunday — rain or shine — schools, shuls, organizations and indi-viduals from throughout Long Island will joins tens of thousands of others from around the metropolitan area and beyond for the annual Celebrate Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan from 57th to 74th streets, from 11:30 am to 4 pm.

This year’s theme is “Israel Imagines.”For the 22nd year, there’ll be a free

Israel Day concert in Central Park over-lapping the parade, from 2:30 to 7:30 pm. Scheduled performers include Gad Elbaz, Alex Clare, LIPA, Mati Shriki, Tal Vaknin, and Shloime Dachs.

Among political and communal leaders expected to speak are Gov. Mike Huckabee, MK Danny Danon, former U.N. Ambassador John Balton and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Billed as “The Concert With A Message,” the event, at the park’s Summer Stage (enter at Fifth Avenue at 72nd Street), is dedicated to the memory of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fren-kel and Eyal Yifrach, hy”d.

A multi-ethnic Celebrate Israel Festival is

Getting closerto G-d, eachon our level

Pirket Avot’sintellectualchallenge

In the army,Rav Lichtensteinwashed dishes

Judy’s backin The Jewish Star’s kitchen

Rabbi Binny FreedmanPage 18

Rabbi Avi BilletPage 18

Kosher BookwormPage 4

Who’s in the KitchenPage 14

planned for Pier 94 off the West Side High-way, about one-and-a-half miles away, from 2 to 7 pm. Admission to this event is $5 to $15.

Among the many Jewish schools participat-ing in the march are the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockaway, Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, North Shore Hebrew Academy, the Shulamith School for Girls, and Shalhevet.

Those who can’t make it can watch a slice of the parade on FOX MY9 from noon to 2 pm.

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Golden Square welded Iraqi actions to Ber-lin’s iron will. Why did they become partners? The Golden Square wanted Germany to de-stroy the British and Jewish presence in their country. The Third Reich craved what was be-neath the ground — oil. Without that oil, still controlled by a British oil company, Germany could not invade Russia.

An abortive effort to seize British oil and military facilities in Iraq roiled throughout May 1941. But on May 28, a British military column determined to protect the oil instal-lations finally punched toward the outskirts of Baghdad to defeat the insurgency. The Nazi-allied Golden Square and the Reich’s wirepuller, Grobba, fled the capital. At 4 am

on May 31, the acting mayor emerged with a white flag on behalf of the residuum of of-ficial authority in Iraq.

The next day, on June 1, with British au-thority nominal-ly restored but still withdrawn beyond the out-skirts of Bagh-dad and the Golden Square coup plotters out of the coun-try, the British puppet regent, Prince ‘Abd al-Ilah, returned

to Iraq. During the few hours surrounding the regent’s return, a power vacuum existed in the country. It resulted in the bloodbath of June 1–2 that became known as the Farhud.

The original plans for a sweeping anti-Jewish action on June 1, organized before the pseudo-success of the British, were in-tended to mimic Nazi mass murder cam-paigns in Europe.

Lists of Jews had already been compiled. Jewish homes had been marked in advanced with a blood-red hamsa, or palm prints, to guide the killing. The text announcing the mass murder and expulsion was already pre-pared and scheduled for radio broadcast.

But Jewish leaders who learned of the im-pending disaster begged for mercy from the temporary local mayoral authorities, who successfully engineered the expulsion from Baghdad of the massacre planners. The radio broadcast on May 31 merely announced that the British-appointed regent would return to his palace from his temporary refuge in Trans-Jordan.

B aghdad’s Jews had every reason to celebrate. June 1 was the joyous holy day of Shavuot, commemorating when

the Law was given to the Jews on Mt. Sinai. Baghdad’s Jews thought stability had re-turned to their 2,600-year existence in Iraq. They were so wrong.

At about 3 pm that June 1, Regent ‘Abd al-Ilah landed at the airport near Baghdad. He was making his way across al-Khurr Bridge to the Palace when a contingent of Baghdadi Jews went out to greet him.

As the group came to the bridge, they en-countered a contingent of dejected soldiers returning from their dismal surrender to British forces. The mere sight of these Jews, bedecked in festive holiday garb, was enough to enrage the soldiers.

Suddenly, the Jews were viciously at-tacked with knives and axes. Several were hacked to death right then and there on the bridge. The planned systematic extermina-

tion, now foiled, broke down into a sponta-neous citywide slaughter.

Baghdad became a fast-moving hell. Frenzied mobs raced throughout the city and murdered Jews openly on the streets. Women were raped as their horrified fami-lies looked on. Infants were killed in front of their parents. Homes and stores were emp-tied and then burned. Gunshots and screams electrified the city for hours upon hours. Be-headings, torsos sliced open, babies dismem-bered, horrid tortures and mutilations were widespread. Severed limbs were waved here and there as hideous trophies.

Baghdad burned and Jewish existence be-came smoke spires against the sky. A syna-gogue was invaded and its Torahs burned in classic Nazi fashion.

Meanwhile, British troops remained min-utes away, under orders from London not to move in lest it stir Arab sentiment against the oil infrastructure.

The streets were not safe for Jews. Their homes, already well-marked as Jewish resi-dences, were even less safe. Gangs comprised of soldiers, police, and civilian looters invad-ed Jewish neighborhoods with impunity.

In home after home, furniture was moved up against the door to create a barricade. As the invaders pushed at the doors, more and heavier furniture was shoved into place. The ceaseless battering and kicks eventually made progress, and inevitably, in house af-ter house, the killers broke in. As the Arabs breached the entrances, many families would escape to the roof, one step ahead.

Fleeing Jews jumped from one roof to an-other. In some instances, parents and siblings threw children down from roofs to waiting blankets below.

When there was no place beyond the roof, some Jews held off their attackers with boil-ing oil, stones, and whatever other makeshift defenses they could muster.

W omen were defiled everywhere. Arabs broke into the girl’s school and the students were raped — endlessly. Six

Jewish girls were carted away to a village 15 kilometers north and located only later. One young girl was raped, and then her breasts slashed off — an all too typical crime that day. Young or old, Jewish females were set upon and mercilessly gang raped and often mutilated.

Finally, the mayor telephoned the Regent, momentarily the supreme authority in the country, and beseeched him to issue orders to loyal troops. That he did. As the order cir-culated, loyal units began opening fire on the rioters, especially when they turned to Mus-lim neighborhoods to continue their pillage. Once the shooting began, rioters fled.

Days later, when the Regent eventually re-stored order, the British entered the city lim-its. The oil was secure. The Jews of Baghdad were not.

In truth, no one will ever know many were murdered or maimed during those two dark days. Official statistics, based on intimi-dated and reluctant witnesses, listed about 110 Jews dead. Hundreds were listed as in-jured. But Jewish leaders said the real num-bers were far greater. One Iraqi historian sug-gested as many as 600 were murdered during the overnight rampage.

The Jewish Burial Society was afraid to bury the bodies. The corpses were igno-miniously collected and entombed in a large, long, rounded mass grave that resembled a massive loaf of bread.

Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust, and The Farhud — Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.

On June 1, he will proclaim International Farhud Day at a live globally-streamed event at the United Nations.

Copyright 2010 Edwin Black

When Baghdad burned…Continued from page 1