Rachel Wahba

Five years ago, 74 years after the Farhud, “Violent Dispossession,” the United Nations dedicated June 1 International Farhud Day. The terror erupted in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, and lasted exactly forty-eight hours. My mother, Khatoun, was just sixteen, a young Baghdadi Jewish girl. In 1941 Iraq was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, with two thirds of the country’s Jews living in Baghdad. The Farhud broke out when Iraq’s pro-Nazi party was dismantled b