Infographics

Compilation of testimonies commissioned from Sephardi Voices UK by Harif and the Spanish synagogue in Montreal for the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Farhud, the Baghdad massacre of 1 and 2 June 1941, which claimed the lives of at least 179 Jews.
To see the full 30 May 2021 Commemoration, sponsored by 26 organisations, click on this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLquHutFdT0

Aaron Zangi was born in Baghdad, Iraq. He lived all his life in Basra. His father was imprisoned for helping his siblings to escape to Iran. In January of 1969, Aaron was imprisoned and tortured and then released on the 11th day of his imprisonment. Aaron’s release saved him from execution; on January 27th, 1969, nine innocent Iraqi Jews were publicly hanged by the same spying accusations Aaron was just acquitted from. When he was released, his mother helped him and his younger brother to escape to Iran. He remained in Iran for a few months, helping Jews from Iraq seeking refuge in Israel, before joining them in the Jewish State.

Carmella Pardo was born in 1941 in Bombay, India to Iraqi parents. When Pardo was a small child, her family returned to the Iraqi city of Basra. In 1948 her father Salim was arrested and charged with being a communist and Zionist. He was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor in a desert prison. Upon Salim’s imprisonment, her parents agreed that her mother should escape to Israel with Carmella and her brother. Carmella, her mother and brother escaped Iraq through Iran to Israel. Salim joined them in 1953 after being released from prison.

Fuad Salem was born in the city of Shamia, Iraq in 1934. He remembers the anti-Semitic persecution he suffered during his childhood. While he was studying in Baghdad, at the age of 13, he and his uncle were taken from their house by the police to prison; they were accused of being Zionists. He saw then firsthand how they were torturing Jews in prison. At 14, his father smuggled him to Iran.

Yvette Dabby was born in Basra, Iraq. Growing up, most of her family had already fled Iraq for Israel. As a young woman, she was fired from the Structural Engineering office where she worked because her boss was no longer allowed to employ Jews. In 1969 the situation for Iraq’s remaining Jews became untenable and Yvette was forced to escape. She was smuggled out of the country by Kurds.

Caroline Pettel was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1965, where she lived until age six. Her family was smuggled out of Iraq in 1971, during the Iraqi holiday of independence. They escaped to Tehran, Iran and continued on to settle in Israel.

Joseph Samuels was born in Baghdad in 1930. He was an excellent student and was accepted to universities in the US, and Samuels obtained student visa. But after 1948, Iraq refused to grant exit visas to Jews. He decided to flee, and with his younger brother, in a small boat with without an engine, was smuggled Basra to Iran and then to Israel. He eventually settled in Santa Monica, California.

Sadok Masliyah was born Salech Masliyah in Baghdad, Iraq in 1934. He has fond memories of his childhood in Iraq. He fled Iraq and immigrated to Israel alone as a minor, using the documentation of his older brother who had already fled to Israel illegally.

Shaul Massry was born in Basra, Iraq in 1930. His father died when he was four years old, and his mother moved with the children to Baghdad, in order to be close to her two brothers. They lived in the Muslim area of Baghdad, which was cheaper, and attended public school. He became a doctor and a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California