On May 6th, officials of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day. The ceremony was the first official commemoration of the Holocaust in Iraqi history and featured speeches by Nevzat Hadi, Mayor of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region and Mariwan Naqshbandi, the head of the Kurdistan regional government's department for religious coexistence. The ceremony came as Kurdish forces and their Iraqi Army allies were engaged in fierce fighting against ISIS in the northern Nineveh Province.
The ceremony was organized by Sherzad Omer Mamsani, the Jewish affairs representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government and took place at his office, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Mamsani spearheaded the passage of a 2014 law which established representative offices for minority faiths in the region and formerly offered restitution of properties to religious and other minorities who had left Iraqi Kurdistan, including the thousands of Kurdish Jews who left Iraqi Kurdistan after the creation of state of Israel.
Mamsani believes thousands of people with Jewish heritage still live in Iraqi Kurdistan. In an interview with Fox News, he said, “The number of known Jews or families with Jewish heritage grows as we discover individuals who have been quiet for decades, or as some Kurdish and Iraqi Jews return from the diaspora for long-term business.” Naqshbandi, according to Kurdish news portal Rudaw, said it was “our duty to support the Jewish religion. When you look at the towns as well the villages in Kurdistan, you see many Jewish families have survived.” Mamsani plans to open a cultural center affairs center where Kurds of all religious backgrounds can learn about Judaism and Jews.
Remembrance of the Holocaust has special resonance to Kurds. According to Human Rights Watch, from 1987-1989, the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein committed genocide when the regime “engaged in a campaign of extermination against the Kurds of Northern Iraq” it called the Anfal campaign. On March 16th, 1988 5,000 civilians, including women and children were murdered in Halabja by Iraqi forces using mustard gas and nerve agents. In total, as many as 182,000 Kurdish civilians were murdered according to the Kurdistan Regional Government during the Anfal campaign. In 2009, in concert with the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented an exhibition at the United Nations on the Halabja massacre after a visit to Halabja in 2008 at the invitation of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and co-founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that Simon Wiesenthal himself had been one of the first to call attention to the genocide of the Kurds. “If Saddam had been stopped then it would be a totally different planet today.” Cooper said. Cooper cited Wiesenthal as saying, in reference to the genocide, “Tyrants will interpret the silence of the world in ways that we won’t expect.”
Amos Benyamin of Stevenson Ranch was born in Israel to Kurdish-Jewish parents from Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. His parents told him that Kurdish Jews were treated “beautifully” by their Muslim and Assyrian Christian neighbors. Benyamin said he found the news the Kurdistan Regional Government commemorated the Holocaust heartwarming, particularly in light of the widespread Holocaust denial in other Muslim countries. “In other Muslim countries, there is Holocaust denial and here we have, what we would say in Hebrew, 'Or b’Ktzeh Haminharah,' 'the light at the end of the tunnel.' To hear something like this coming from the government, in my opinion it’s a big thing,” Benyamin said. “It’s beautiful.”
Charlie Carnow is a Research Analyst for UNITE HERE Local 11 and a lover of the Talmud and language. All comments are his unless otherwise noted. You can reach him at @CCarnow.
