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Witness History: The Jewish exodus from Iraq

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The Jewish exodus from Iraq

12/05/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, The Jewish exodus from Iraq

How two thousand Jews fled persecution in the summer of 1971, helped by Iraqi Kurds

How one Jewish family fled persecution in Iraq in the summer of 1971. They were smuggled over the mountains with the help of the Iraqi Kurds.

In the summer of 1971 around 2,000 Iraqi Jews were forced to flee the country following persistent threats and persecution. The Jewish community in Iraq dated back to the Babylonian times, but by the mid 1950s numbered less than eight thousand. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Edwin Shuker, who was just 16 years old when he and his family were smuggled over the mountains to safety in neighbouring Iran by members of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. Edwin and his family eventually settled in the UK.

Photo: Edwin Shuker and his parents and grandmother at home in Baghdad before they left in 1971 (courtesy of Edwin Shuker)

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