June 1941: The Farhoud massacre remembered

Arutz Sheva ^ | 2/6/17 | Dr. Edy Cohen

[Eleutheria5]

On the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, June 1-2, 1941 (5701 on the Hebrew calendar), the Muslim residents of Baghdad carried out a savage pogrom against their Jewish neighbors. In this pogrom, known by its Arabic name al-Farhoud, about 200 Jews were murdered and thousands wounded. Jewish property was plundered and many homes set ablaze.

Within a week, the British ousted the pro-Nazi government of General Rashid Ali, which had seized power in a coup d’état two months earlier, and restored the legal Iraqi government. That government appointed a commission of inquiry into the pogrom, which determined that the Nazi propaganda of Radio Berlin had been one of the massacre’s foremost instigators.

The commission’s report also identified the main individuals who had impelled the assault. It pointed to the extensive activity of Dr. Fritz Grobba, the German ambassador to Baghdad, and to the activity of the former mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, who had fled to Iraq from Mandatory Palestine in October 1939 (after a short spell in Beirut) and begun inciting against the Iraqi Jews. The mufti had also worked with Iraqi subversive elements, including Rashid Ali, to overthrow Iraq’s ruling Hashemite monarchy and install a pro-Nazi regime.

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Known for his virulent anti-Semitism, Bahri stated proudly in a memoir he wrote after the war, “I was the first Arab to collaborate with the Nazis.” His hatred towards Jews was so intense that he was summoned for a reprimand in Propaganda Minister Goebbels’s office because of his excessively vitriolic attacks on Jews and especially his constant use of the term “Jewish criminals.”

Four days before the Farhoud, Bahri stated on Radio Berlin:

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[PGR88]

His hatred towards Jews was so intense that he was summoned for a reprimand in Propaganda Minister Goebbels’s office

Wow. When even Goebbels thinks your anti-jewish rhetoric is too much, you are really off the charts...

[Eleutheria5]

This was 1941, and before the Wansee conference, and to Goebels, I’m sure the timing was what he objected to. Later, he would have been fine with ratcheting up the tone a few notches. But not right then.