Senate moves to prevent return of Jewish archive to Iraq

[Jesus Malverde]

31. Do you have any links? My understanding is...

These materials have been called the “Iraqi Jewish archive,” but the name is somewhat misleading. An “archive” usually refers to a collection of papers that were saved, organized and made available for future use because of their historical importance. The Iraqi Jewish archive is more like what you might find in a Geniza, a repository in a synagogue or Jewish cemetery for Hebrew books that are no longer usable but cannot be thrown away because of their sacred character. These papers and books were left behind, probably in a Baghdad synagogue, by Jews as they fled Iraq; the majority—120,000—departed in 1950-51, in the mass migration called “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah,” which was facilitated by an Israeli airlift. The Iraqi state forbade Jewish emigrants to take much in the way of personal effects, let alone communal property. Rather than destroy the books and documents, emigrating Jews left them in the synagogue where they remained until they were seized by the Iraqi secret police in the 1980s. Two sets of hands thus put this collection together: Jews unable to bring them along on their journey from Iraq but unwilling to destroy them; and the regime that persecuted them, drove them out and, once they had gone, confiscated their property. (Why the regime didn’t destroy the papers is anybody’s guess. Of course, Saddam Hussein would not be the first dictator to seize the treasured books and papers of the Jews he persecuted, hoarding them away in a secret location long after their owners had fled.) Neither the Jews themselves nor the state that seized their books and papers ever expected they’d become an archive in the sense that scholars use the term.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/147736/iraqi-jewish-treasures