Personal Stories

After the British invasion of Baghdad in May of 1941 the reaction of the city’s Arab population was swift and pointed. Violence was unleashed on the Jewish population including Edward Ben Eliezer and his family.

The deliverance of Iraqi Jewry, that rose almost as one man and migrated to the newly founded State of Israel, in the years 1948 – 1952, could be considered not only as a glorious chapter in the annals of Zionism, but also as a demonstration of the potency of the Zionist idea.

Joseph Shoua is part of the generation that remembers Iraq well. He was born in 1927 and did not leave till 1951 at the age of 24.“You had such a good feeling during the holidays,” he says. “In Iraq we [the Jews] were everyday united.”

The sun falls on Rachel’s gaunt face. The Alzheimer’s and time have worn her down. Now her skin is pulled by its own weight over her bones. Her apartment is full of people; her daughter Semha, her son Rami, her niece Amira, her grandchildren Asaf, Li-Hi, Ayelet and Duni and of course her Phillipino attendant Luz.

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what’s missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

Rachelle was born to Kedourie and Rosa Ani on Feb 23rd, 1922 in an upper class neighborhood in the southern port city of Basra. Her father, Kedourie Ani, was a notable tea merchant involved in the lucrative trade circuit between India and Great Britain.

In Basra, cold weather in December was unusual, but in 1949 the temperature was in the 40’s, and it was bitterly cold at 11 at night. I had put my life in the hands of two Muslim smugglers, and I wasn’t alone. There were 15 other teenagers, including my younger brother, Nory. The underground movement to help Jews escape out of Iraq had arranged for a boat to take us to Iran. We boarded, one at a time, at varying intervals, in order to avoid raising suspicion in the neighborhood. We had no luggage, money, food, or water.

“I remember camels coming up to our front door with huge sacks of salt,” says Joseph Shamash. Vendors would come in through the high walls of his family’s home just two blocks away from the King’s Palace in Baghdad.