{"id":25553,"date":"2025-06-03T23:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T20:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reganews.co.il\/en\/?p=25553"},"modified":"2025-06-03T20:59:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T17:59:34","slug":"knesset-honors-84th-anniversary-of-event-etched-in-national-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reganews.co.il\/en\/knesset-honors-84th-anniversary-of-event-etched-in-national-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Knesset Honors 84th Anniversary of Event Etched in National Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Knesset plenary held a special session on Tuesday to mark the Farhud<\/em>\u2014a violent pogrom against Baghdad\u2019s Jewish community that took place during the Shavuot holiday in 1941. Hundreds of Jews were murdered and thousands injured in one of the most traumatic events in the history of Iraqi Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Was Either Flee or Die\u201d
\n<\/strong>MK Ofir Katz opened the session: \u201cOn June 1, 1941, the Farhud broke out\u2014Baghdad\u2019s streets turned into a massacre zone. The cry of \u2018Itbach al-Yahud\u2019 (\u2018slaughter the Jews\u2019) filled the neighborhoods. Muslim residents, who had just days before lived as neighbors with the Jewish community, joined soldiers and police in slaughtering Jews. Women were raped, property was looted, synagogues and Jewish stores were set on fire, and Torah scrolls were desecrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz shared the story of his grandmother, Chahla, who was five years old at the time: \u201cShe and her family had to move from house to house, hiding in order to survive. She had never encountered such hatred; she didn\u2019t know such evil existed. Fear paralyzed her and her family\u2014it was either flee or die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Farhud | Photo: Ben-Zvi Institute Archive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOur Duty Is to Pass This History On\u201d
\n<\/strong>Katz said his grandmother was ultimately saved by a Muslim family that agreed to hide her and her relatives: \u201cBaghdad was no longer the place she had grown up in. The city was wounded and broken. The Jewish community couldn\u2019t recover from the horrors they endured.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, there are 18,000 Jews living in Israel who survived the Farhud. The wound has never fully healed. Iraqi Jews never demanded much in return from the state\u2014but the recognition of what they went through, and the hardships they faced before immigrating to Israel, is something I have committed to preserving and telling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our responsibility\u2014our role is to pass on to future generations what their grandparents went through in the Diaspora, until the Jewish state was established,\u201d Katz said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
MK Ofir Katz | Photo: Yonatan Sindel\/Flash90<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHe Survived the Farhud, But Not the Atrocity of October 7\u201d
\n<\/strong>One survivor of the Farhud was the late Shlomo Mansour, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kissufim on October 7, murdered in Hamas captivity, and whose body was returned to Israel several months ago. During the Farhud, his family home was attacked, his parents were beaten, and even the family dog was shot. Shlomo fled to the roof and witnessed horrors that stayed with him his entire life.<\/p>\n

His niece recalled: \u201cHe saw with his own eyes the abuse of his family and neighbors by Muslim rioters\u2014atrocities that the mind cannot grasp and the hand struggles to write.\u201d He later made aliyah to Israel, believing he was now safe.<\/p>\n

His daughter shared that the family was saved by an Arab woman who entered and told the rioters it was her house\u2014successfully turning them away. \u201cThere were good neighborly relations with some of the Arabs,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn childhood, he survived the Farhud,\u201d his sister Hadassah Lazar once said. \u201cBut in his old age, he did not survive the horror that befell us on October 7. He was a man of a rare kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Shlomo Mansour | Photo: Courtesy of the Family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a special Knesset session, lawmakers marked the Farhud\u2014the brutal massacre of Baghdad\u2019s Jews during Shavuot in 1941. MK Ofir Katz shared his grandmother\u2019s harrowing experience, highlighting acts of courage and the importance of passing on the memory to future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":25554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2277,2563,2276,8,88],"tags":[6354,1489,4683,2380],"class_list":["post-25553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-knesset","category-people","category-politics","category-will-remember","tag-farhud","tag-history","tag-israeli-knesset","tag-ofir-katz"],"yoast_head":"\nKnesset Honors 84th Anniversary of Event Etched in National Memory - REGA news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Knesset Honors 84th Anniversary of Event Etched in National Memory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a special Knesset session, lawmakers marked the Farhud\u2014the brutal massacre of Baghdad\u2019s Jews during Shavuot in 1941. 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