Baghdad, Iraq – A trove of Jewish books and other materials, rescued from a sewage-filled Baghdad basement during the 2003 invasion, is now caught up in a tug-of-war between the U.S. and Iraq.
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Ranging from a medieval religious book to children’s Hebrew primers, from photos to Torah cases, the collection is testimony to a once vibrant Jewish community in Baghdad. Their present-day context is the relationship, fraught with distrust, between postwar Iraq and its Jewish diaspora.
Discovered in a basement used by Saddam Hussein’s secret police, the collection was sent to the U.S. for safekeeping and restoration, and sat at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Maryland until last year, when Iraqi officials started a campaign to get it back.
Initially contacts went well, but now the deputy culture minister, Taher Naser al-Hmood, says “The Americans are not serious” about setting a deadline for getting back the archive.
U.S. officials deny that they are delaying its return. They say they only recently got the roughly $3 million needed to clean up the materials — the whole point of bringing them to the U.S. — and they question the rush to return the collection now, when the goal is so close.
“It is not U.S. government material, and we have every intention of returning it,” said Phil Frayne, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
“We understand the frustration over the delay but we’re happy that this is going to finally move forward,” he said.
But al-Hmood was skeptical, saying he had not been told about the money. “Let the American side prove its goodwill,” he said. “We cannot trust the Americans. They have not fulfilled their previous promises.”
The case is complicated by the knee-jerk suspicions that cloud everything related to Jewish history in the Arab world, Iraq’s attempts to assert its sovereignty after years of U.S. domination, and a diaspora trying to recover its history.
There are claims of Jewish pressure to prevent the return of the collection, and questions about why the U.S. didn’t prevent the looting of Arab and Islamic treasures during the invasion but was able to bring the Jewish collection to safety in America. Among those voicing indignation about the transfer of the archive to America is Liwa Smaysim, the minister of archaeology, who belongs to a fiercely anti-American party in the government coalition.
On the other hand, once returned to Baghdad, the archive would likely be beyond the reach of Jewish scholars, especially Israeli ones, given the absence of diplomatic ties with Israel, and the anti-Semitism that exists here. Iraqi officials have vowed to restore the materials and digitize them so they’re available outside of Iraq as well.
Besides parchments and photos accumulated over the years, the collection includes books printed in Baghdad, Warsaw and Venice, one of them a Jewish religious book published in 1568, and 50 copies of a children’s primer in Hebrew and Arabic.
They are the lost heritage of what was once one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East, which dated to the 6th century B.C. and ended with an exodus after the creation of Israel in 1948. Today fewer than 10 Jews are believed to be left here.
After the collection was found by a U.S. military team searching for weapons of mass destruction, the U.S.-headed agency temporarily governing Iraq signed an agreement with the Maryland archive to take its contents to the U.S.
It stipulated that the U.S. would restore and display the materials before returning them to Iraq, but that the Iraqi government could have them back any time it asked, regardless of whether the work was complete.
Iraqi Culture Ministry officials say they appreciate the U.S. efforts to save the materials, but are frustrated about getting them back.
IMHO that treasure of documents should not be returned to the Iraqis. It belongs to the Jewish people and they are not permitted to live freely in Iraq.
I feel strongly that it should stay in the US UNLESS Iraq allows Israeli’s and any Jews to enter the country, with their Jewish paraphernalia, without hindrance to view these treasures.
Which, of course, will never happen…….
Regarding Iraq, the Iraqis hate not only Jews, but also Americans. Pertaining to the looting of their ancient antiquities, the looting was done by their fellow Iraqis. The Iraqi Government still has not returned money and property to Iraqi Jews who fled from Iraq during the 1940’s, and 1950’s, which Iraq expropriated. In fact, following the 2003 invasion, there was supposed to have been a list compiled by the Israeli Government regarding claims of Iraqi Jews, now residing in EY. Until the latter is resolved, I don’t feel that any of the historical Jewish artifacts should be returned to Baghdad. When Nori Al Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq was asked about having diplomatic relations with EY, he refused to directly answer the question.
These items belong to the Jews of Iraq who now mostly reside outside of Iraq except 10 who somehow manage to live there. They are its owners and they should say where it should go. It’s not Iraq’s. That it was found in a basement used by Saddam Hussein’s secret police, means that it was confiscated. I would think that the current Iraqi government would want to rectify it and not leave it confiscated. I think the state department should play hard ball with the Iraqis and tell them point blank: hey Iraqis, these are confiscated goods; confiscated from the Jews in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Do you want to continue the oppression of the Jews? Will you continue the oppression of the Jews and a policy of confiscation?
To add; it would be like returning to Germany ten years after the war the goods the Germans confiscated from the Jews, and the Americans had rescued when they liberated the Jews.