Farhud survivor and Gaza hostage Shlomo Mansour is dead [Farhoud: Arab-Nazi 1941 pogrom in Iraq]

It was always going to be unlikely that Shlomo Mansour , 86, the oldest hostage in Gaza, would survive his ordeal at the hands of Hamas. His friends and relatives feared that he was physically frail. Point of No Return has featured his story, because he was the link between 7 October and the Farhud pogrom in Iraq. He survived the Farhud pogrom as a young child, before his family moved to Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports his passing, announced by Kibbutz Kissufim:

Update: It now appears that Shlomo Mansour was murdered on 7 October and his body dragged into Gaza.

Kibbutz Kissufim announced on Tuesday the death of Shlomo Mansour, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and held in the Gaza Strip for 494 days.

“With a heavy heart, we kibbutz members received the news this morning of the murder in Hamas captivity of our dear friend, Shlomo Mansour, 86, who was kidnapped from his home,” the kibbutz said in an official statement. “Shlomo was much more than a community member to us – he was a father, a grandfather, a true friend, and a beating heart of Kissufim. This is one of the hardest days in the history of our kibbutz.”

...the evil influence of Nazism went well beyond Europe. Outside of Europe, ..
As mentioned previously, Haj Mohammed Amin Al Husseini, the Mufti, openly embraced the Nazis and spent the war years in Berlin. During this time, he brought other Arabs to Germany where they got training in terrorist tactics, which they put to use in 1947-1948. This included the bombing of the Palestine Post building by Fawzi El-Kuttub, a graduate of an SS terrorist course in Nazi Germany. A confederate of both Grobba and Husseini was Sami Shawkat, an Iraqi nationalist active in the movement to adopt Nazism. In 1933, he delivered a lecture to the students of the Central Secondary School, saying that “the nation which does not excel in the Profession of Death with iron and fire will be forced to die under the hooves of the horses and under the boots of a foreign soldiery.”

In Germany, the pogroms did not begin the moment Hitler took power. Kristallnacht, the first major act of violence by the Nazis, did not take place until November 1938. Rather, the anti-Jewish persecution was a step by step process. In April 1933, Jewish civil servants were excluded from state service; that same month, Jewish enrollment in universities was restricted. Soon after, Jews were banned from professions; after that, mixed marriages were banned. Some 400 anti-Semitic decrees were enacted by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939.

In Iraq, it was eerily similar. In September 1934, a few dozen government clerks were ousted from their jobs because they were Jewish. In 1935, the Iraqi ministry of education adopted unwritten quotas for Jews seeking admission to college. In 1936, hundreds of Jews were dismissed from government service. Over the next few years, bombs and grenades were hurled at synagogues and yeshivas.

At this time, a group called Futuwwa was formed. Basically, this was the Iraqi version of the Hitler youth, and Shawkat was one of its leaders. Shawkat required its members to attend a candlelight Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1938, at the invitation of the chief of the Hitler youth. Another key figure in Futuwwa was Salah ad-Din as-Sabbagh, who was known for his many publications extolling the Nazis. The Mufti and his allies had thoroughly permeated Baghdad’s ruling circles. Taha al Hashimi, the Iraqi chief of staff, was also the head of the committee for the defense of Palestine, which lead to unending propaganda and slander against Iraqi Jews.

By 1941, there was no doubt that there would be a pogrom against Iraqi Jews. The only question was when and how. There was a Jewish officer in the Iraqi army, Shaul Sehayik, who was in charge of processing all orders, which were stamped in numerical sequence. He saw one missing, and since he had a key to the commander’s safe, he found a document containing an order to closely supervise the Jews, since they were potentially disloyal and to prepare a list of Jews in the province. On May 3, 1941, Sehayik, now an ex-soldier, was in a Baghdad coffee shop where he heard people shouting praise and admiration of Hitler and stating that they could even do a better job of getting rid of Jews than the Nazis. On May 6, 1941, a fanatic crowd armed with knives broke into a Jewish hospital accusing the Jews of infamy and destroying an X-ray machine, believing that it was sending coded signals to the British. Two days later, Baghdad radio began the messages: “After the victory over the British, revenge shall be taken on the ‘internal enemy’ (the Jews) and we shall hand him over to your hands for destruction.” That same day, General Archibald Wavell, commander-in-chief of the Middle East theatre, urged London not to show any force in Iraq, fearing that this would unite Iraqis behind Rashid Ali al Gaylani, a pro-Nazi figure in Iraq. Gaylani had back on April 1, 1941, led a pro-Nazi military coup that installed him as Prime Minister which led to a British invasion shortly thereafter. The British concern was not to make it appear that they wanted to re-occupy Iraq, and to keep the oil flowing.

In late May 1941, just a few days before the pogrom took place, Nazi al-Sabawi, a member of the committee for internal security and the self-appointed governor of Baghdad, summoned Chief Rabbi Sassoon Kadoori. Kadoori was ordered to instruct the Jews to lock themselves up in their homes for a few days, stay off the telephones, cook enough for a three-day journey, pack a single suitcase and prepare for transport to detention centers. This was eerily identical to the Nazi approach in Poland and Eastern Europe. What Rabbi Kadoori did not know was how murderous the plans were. Jewish homes had already been marked in advance with a blood-red mystic palm print to guide the killing. Radio broadcasts were planned for the next day.

Rabbi Kadoori then summoned Jewish leaders, who urged him to go the mayor of Baghdad, Arshad Umari, who was friendly towards the Jews. The Rabbi walked into the mayor’s office and threw his circular turban on the floor, which was a symbol of utter despair, surrender and heartbreak. Umari told the Rabbi not to worry, and Umari relieved al-Sabawi of all power. By May 31, Iraq radio announced that order had been restored to Baghdad. The regent of Iraq was returning the next day, June 1, which also happened to be Shavuot. The Jews of Iraq were in a joyous mood. But little did they realize that this was merely the quiet before the storm.

At 3:00 pm on June 1, Prince Abd al-Ilah landed at the airport. During the few hours surrounding the return, a power vacuum existed in Iraq, and this would result in the bloodbath known as the Farhud. When the prince returned, a lot of Jews were there to greet him. As it was Shavuot, they were dressed in their finest clothing. But at a bridge, they ran into a group of soldiers. These soldiers attacked Jews with knives and axes, and the violence quickly spread. Frenzied mobs raced through the city and murdered Jews openly in the streets. Women were raped; homes and stores were emptied and burned. Infants were killed right in front of their parents. Beheadings, torsos sliced open, babies dismembered, tortures, and mutilations were widespread. Limbs would be waved around as trophies.

The devastation continued. In some cases, police units rolled up to a Jewish home in machine gun mounted vehicles and would turn their weapons on the front door and start shooting. Jewish homes and shops were burned; a synagogue was invaded, its Sifrei Torahs defiled and destroyed, all in a matter very similar to Kristallnacht. Iraqis broke into a girl’s school, and Jewish girls were endlessly raped, with one girl even getting her breasts slashed off, which was typical for that day. Young or old, Jewish females were set upon and mercilessly gang raped and often mutilated.

Even the hospital proved no relief. There were doctors who declined to render medical assistance, and some soldiers even tried in the hospital to rape women. Other Jews were poisoned in the hospital. Things very similar to this also happened in Germany, where German doctors also declined to render medical assistance to Jews.

The Farhud was not a one day event. It continued until the next day, and the police and army were active participants. Only when British ambassador Cornwallis told the regent not to sit down but to form a government did things settle down. The regent did succeed in eventually restoring order.

How many Jews were murdered? Some say a little over a hundred; some say closer to 200; others say several hundred. Hundreds of others were injured, while over 1,500 homes and businesses were looted. 2,500 families - 15% of the Jews in Baghdad - suffered directly from this pogrom. This was not a gang operation, but a mass movement copying Nazism. Compare this with Kristallnacht, there 91 were murdered and 7,000 businesses were destroyed in Germany and Austria. When you consider that the Farhud took place in only one city, Baghdad, and that the Jewish population in Baghdad was around 75,000 (125,000 in Iraq as a whole) and the Jewish populations of Germany and Austria were around 800,000, the proportional damage done by the Farhud was actually greater than the damage done in Kristallnacht. The biggest question is why the British, who were on the outskirts of the city and were in a position to stop the massacre, stood by and did nothing. While papers which might shed light on the matter are to be kept closed by the British until 2017, some information has seen the light of day. The pro-Nazi regime had been overthrown, and they did not want to overshadow the Iraqi government by stepping in to quell the attacks. Only when the situation got so out of hand that the Iraqi government could not control it did they ask the British to come in. In this way, the British could say that they were invited by the government and that they were not acting to protect their interests...
https://www.jewishmag.com/175mag/farhud_arab_pogrom/farhud_arab_pogrom.htm

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