‘A race against the clock’: Capturing Sephardi and Mizrahi histories
Published in Plus61J
July 2,2021
Gad Ben-Meir was 10 years old when his beloved Baghdad descended into bloodied anarchy.
It was Shavuot, June 1-2, 1941, and this was the Farhud — Arabic for “violent dispossession” — the pogrom that followed the collapse of the pro-Nazi regime of Rashid Ali. Between 180-800 Jews were murdered, thousands more were injured and women were raped and mutilated.
And anyone seen to be assisting Jews met the same fate.
Ben-Meir, who arrived in Melbourne in 1968 (after flying to Israel in 1950), remembers the Muslim judge who arrived at his house, flanked by two soldiers. “Come on,” he beckoned. “You are coming with me. I will take you to my home.”
With riots overtaking other areas of Baghdad, the judge silently led Ben-Meir, his parents and six of his siblings through the hushed streets of the city’s Jewish Quarter.
The judge was an associate of Ben-Meir’s cousin. He had already visited the cousin’s home in the Muslim Quarter and discovered it had been looted.
“They took everything. They didn’t even leave a nail on the wall.”
Searching for the family, the judge found Ben-Meir’s aunt and uncle huddled with their eight children in a small room on the second floor.
“Thank God you are still alive,” he told them.
For the remaining two days of the Farhud, the judge hid the 19 members of Ben-Meir’s family in the two-bedroom home he shared with his widowed mother.