Tuesday 29 November 2011, 17:00
Hannah Marshall: "This is the picture of my grandfather and his family. It shows my grandfather, his mother
and three brothers. The picture was taken in Basra in 1918. My grandfather is the boy
standing at the back of the picture, with the black jacket and tie."
My grandfather was an Iraqi Jew, who ended up living in a North Wales seaside town. I never met him, but I've always been fascinated by this side of the family. A couple of years ago, I decided to find out more. I got in touch with distant cousins, and cousins of cousins, and friends of cousins - everyone in the Iraqi-Jewish community is linked to everyone else, somehow. The stories they shared were shocking, and revealed a deep-rooted history.
In 1917, a third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish.
Today just seven Jewish people live incognito in the city, their lives under constant threat. You're probably more surprised by the old figure than the new one. A third of the population? In fact Iraqi Jews thrived - they ran successful businesses, dominated the civil service and lived in relative peace and friendship with their Muslim neighbours. Then everything changed.
In the 1940s Arab nationalism, Nazi propaganda and anti-Zionism fuelled by the formation of Israel combined to create a wave of often violent anti-Jewish feeling. By 1951 nearly 120,000 Jews had fled, most evacuated to tent cities in Israel in a huge airlift. They left everything behind.
Today ancient Jewish shrines remain across Iraq, but the synagogues are empty and most Iraqis know nothing about the Jewish history which surrounds them. We're used to hearing accounts of Jewish exile, and tales of violence in Iraq, but this is the untold story.
The people I spoke to explained that Jewish history in Iraq goes back 1,600 years. In 597BC King Nebuchadnezzar captured the Jewish homeland of Jerusalem and brought them as slaves to Babylon, as it was then known. They flourished between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
I heard stories of parties on sailing boats and of sleeping on the roof in the summer heat. They talked about Muslim friends and business partners, about feeling proud to be Iraqis. They described a Baghdad in which so much of the trade was in Jewish ownership that on a Saturday the souks would go quiet and banks would close.
And, of course, they talked about food - everywhere I went plates of chewy Iraqi macaroons were pressed upon me until I could barely move. The Iraqi Jews in the diaspora have retained their proud tradition of Arabic hospitality.
Alan Yentob, creative director of the BBC, is himself the child of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants. He has never been to Iraq, the dangers are too great, but he grew up in Manchester feeling part of Judeo-Arabic culture - eating Iraqi food, hearing Baghdadi songs and speaking Arabic with his grandmother. He, too, wanted to find out more about his community's history.
For this programme, The Last Jews of Iraq, we talked again to people who remember life in Baghdad, including members of Alan's own family. We found recordings of Judeo-Arabic mvusic from the 1920s, when Jewish musicians dominated Baghdad's music scene.
But we also heard about Jews thrown out of their jobs, people attacked in the street, and young Jewish girls burnt with acid. People remembered their shock when in 1941 Arab neighbours and friends turned on them in a pogrom known as the Farhud.
One man recalled his mother breaking down when she saw the hanging of nine suspected Zionist spies, all relatives or friends of the family, live on Baghdad TV.
The stories of persecution and terror were many but the common sentiment was astonishment that a country in which Jewish people had for centuries been proud citizens could turn on them so suddenly.
And then, just as we finished making the programme, came news of a fresh threat to the seven Jews who remain in Baghdad. An American embassy memo, published by Wikileaks, has revealed their names and identities, which have been reprinted in local Iraqi newspapers. One is now trying to leave the country, the others are determined to stay in the land of their ancestors, despite the dangers.
It all brought home to us the urgency of telling this story now, before it disappears completely. With the news dominated by Middle Eastern tension, it feels so important to hear the tales of my grandfather's world, in which Jews and Arabs lived side by side, sharing their lives, their music, their food and their country.
Hannah Marshall is the producer of the Last Jews of Iraq, a Loftus Audio production for BBC Radio 4.
All posts are reactively-moderated and must obey the house rules.
Tuesday 29 November 2011, 16:30
Wednesday 30 November 2011, 15:18
Behind the scenes at Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra from producers, presenters and programme makers.
Stay updated with the latest posts from the blog.
Subscribe using:
Cultural Exchange: Seventy-five leading creative minds choose their favourite cultural work
Find great Arts and Culture programmes, including Front Row's Cultural Exchange, on our website.
Listen to Front Row's Cultural Exchange
Follow BBC Radio 4 & BBC Radio 4 Extra on Twitter for programme highlights and interesting retweets.
National and international news. 
Comment number 1.
KBBB29th November 2011 - 21:22
No mention of the Bombings of 1950-1951? Do those events not fit with the program maker's agenda.
The Israelis/Zionists encouraged the Jews of Iraq to leave with methods including a bombing campaign.
Anyone interested in that part of the history can find it here.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/impact/iraqijews.cfm
Link to this (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
bru30th November 2011 - 2:16
A very moving and tragic story and a tale that needs to be told, but would the BBC broadcast such a one-sided account of such a sensitive subject from the other side? I think we all know the answer to that.
Alan Yentob tells us "During the 20th Century, 850,000 Jews fled from Arab countries." Yes they did, but didn't Alan think it worth mentioning the other huge population transfer which preceded the majority of it i.e. the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes?
He goes on "Until that point, they'd lived side by side with their Arab neighbours, contributing to and benefiting from the culture of the Middle East. There must be something we can learn from that experience."
And then one of the contributers to the programme told us "I am totally obsessed with finding a reason why Jews lived in Arabia for thousands of years, and they got on in more or less harmony, and therefore if that happened for the last 1400 years, what went wrong in the last 60 or 70 years?"
What went wrong which caused such awful transfers of Jewish and Muslim populations is blindingly obvious. Why are Alan Yentob and/or the BBC so reluctant to say it?
Very moving, very interesting and very biased.
Link to this (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
Dr Ramez J Ghazoul30th November 2011 - 11:16
Dear Alan Yentob:
Over the past few days I have been so looking forward to your Radio-4 programme about Iraqi Jews, as I myself come from Iraq, and as my first ever love (when I was still a young teenager in 1950) was a Jewish girl from the Khalaschi family.
However, I regret to say that I was very disappointed with your programme, not because of what it contained but because of what it ignored. In particular the programme repeated the factual historical claim that Jews had lived happily and flourished in Iraq for over two millenia. But when the rhetorical question was paused near the end of the programme as to what happened over the past sixty or so years to change all that, the question was left muted and unanswered when in fact the answer was all too clear.
You, Mr Yentob, more than most people, should know that what happened in the area over the past sixty or so years was the imposition of Zionism by a predominately Western European culture whose racial discrimination is not confined towards Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims, but also encompassed iraqi Jews of whom you are but one of many fine examples.
Do you not think it was an aberration to leave this question unanswered? Do you not feel it was a disservice to Iraqi Jews?
Ramez J Ghazoul
Link to this (Comment number 3)
Comment number 4.
Jimmy Soffer30th November 2011 - 20:03
Response to Ramez Ghazoul. Actually, the Jews lived happily and flourished over two millenia IN SPITE of the wholesale discrimination against the Jews. You see the Jews did not expect much concerning freedom, jobs, buying or selling property or seeking justice in the courts. So when they were left alone for a while or were not hanged or tortured, they considered that a good period. Beyond the institutionalized discrimination which the Jews accepted as a part of life, they also always lived at the whims of those in power. It is true that the Jews in the Arab world did not enjoy the incessant pogroms of the European Jews but they were subjected to it from time to time depending on the political winds in the Arab world and of course the whims of those in power. Concerning Zionism, again, the Farhood (pogrom) of 1941 had nothing to do with Zionism. There were many lesser attacks against the Jews even before 1941. So to claim that Zionism is the root cause of antisemitism is self serving and disingenuous, your love for a Jewish girl from the Khalaschi family notwithstanding.
Link to this (Comment number 4)
Comment number 5.
hayder ewad30th November 2011 - 20:42
I know muslims and jews lived in Iraq for centuries in a great harmony. This is what my grandmother told me (she died in the late 1980s in the town of Hilla / Babylon at an age of 95 years). This is the feeling I took from reading the books of Dr Sosa (a great Iraqi historian and a stateman) and his Daughter Dr Alia Sosa. This the feeling I had myself when I studied medicine in Iraq between 1982-1988; taught haemato physiology on the hand of Dr Jerome. With all of these expectations, the program left me with great bitterness to the amount of lies and one sided stories Mr Yentob was telling. I felt so disappointed in front of my children whom I forced to switch their TV and listen to the program with . It is so sad that we lost another opportunity to understand each other. .
Link to this (Comment number 5)
Comments 5 of 21