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JewishHistoryעברית

Baghdad hangings of Jews

Date
27 January 1969Hebrew date: 8th of Sh’vat, 5729
Location
Tahrir (Liberation) SquareIraq
Then part of
Iraqi Republic
Perpetrators
  • Ba'th government of Iraq and a revolutionary tribunal (State)
Killed (estimate)
9[1]Jews among 14 people hanged in Baghdad on 27 January 1969, per sources 1 and 2 (nine Jews, two Christians, three Muslims). Source 3 also gives nine Jews. Source 4 states that eleven of the fourteen were Jews. Source 2 records two further Jews hanged in August 1969; those executions are not included in this count.
Country

0.3% – 0.36% of the Jewish population of Iraqi Republic (c. 1969)[58]

Worldwide

0.000071% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1970)[5]

Category
Persecution
Confidence
DisputedSources 1-3 agree that nine of the fourteen people hanged on 27 January 1969 were Jews. Source 4 states that eleven of the fourteen were Jews. Source 2 separately records two further Jewish hangings in August 1969, which may explain some higher totals if later writers combine the dates.

Summary

On 27 January 1969 the Ba'th government of Iraq hanged 14 people convicted of spying for Israel, nine of them Jews, after a revolutionary-tribunal trial. The executions were carried out in public in Baghdad; source 3 places them in Tahrir Square. Baghdad Radio invited the public to "come and enjoy the feast," and source 4 describes a crowd of some 500,000. The remaining Jewish community in Iraq then numbered about 3,000.

Sources

  1. 251. Research Memorandum RNA-6 From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hughes) to Secretary of State Rogers. United States Department of State, Office of the Historian (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume E-4) (1969)
  2. Abraham Ben-Yaacob / Nissim Kazzaz, Baghdad. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  3. Carole Basri and Adriana Davis, 52 years ago, 9 Jews were hanged in Baghdad; What about their families?. The Jerusalem Post (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) (2021)
  4. Jews of Iraq. Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 12,735,000[5]c. 1970
  • Iraqi Republic: 2,500 – 3,000[58]c. 1969JVL's Arab-countries table (Roumani / AJYB compilation) gives 2,500 Jews in Iraq for 1968. The same JVL Iraq narrative states that after the late-1960s persecutions the remaining community numbered about 3,000. AJYB 1981 later lists only 450 for 1979 after further emigration. Figure is for the Iraqi Republic after the monarchy, not the 1940s kingdom total.

Sources for population estimates

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