2,600 years of history: Baghdad honours its Jewish past

Behind a carved wooden door on Baghdad’s historic al-Rashid Street, Iraq’s first Jewish museum has opened its doors. Named “Shamash,” it tells the story of a community that once thrived in Iraq for more than 2,500 years, before almost entirely disappearing.

Since its opening in October, a growing number of Iraqi and foreign visitors have come to explore its documents and photographs. On the walls hang portraits of prominent figures such as Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first finance minister, and Dhafer Fouad Eliyahu, a doctor who treated patients free of charge until his death in 2021.

The building itself carries the community’s memory. Founded in 1928 with funding from Iraqi Jew Yaacoub Shlomo Shamash, it was a school that taught in English to pupils of all faiths. Confiscated by the state in the 1970s, it was returned to the Jewish community by court order in 1992.

The museum is the work of the community’s few remaining representatives, led by Khalida Fouad Eliyahu, the late doctor’s sister, who have set out to restore several heritage sites as Iraq enjoys relative stability after decades of war.

In the 1940s, Iraq was home to around 135,000 Jews, one of the largest and most influential communities in the Middle East. Their exodus began with the Farhud of June 1941, when more than 100 Jews were killed in mob attacks in Baghdad, and accelerated after Israel’s creation in 1948 and the restrictions imposed by Iraqi authorities.

Today, only a few dozen Jews remain, living discreetly, mostly in the Kurdistan region. Some fifty synagogues and community sites still stand, many crumbling or used as warehouses.