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JewishHistoryעברית

Persecution of Iraqi Jews, 1948-1949

Date
1948 – 1949
Location
Iraq (Baghdad and Basra)Iraq
Then part of
Kingdom of Iraq
Perpetrators
  • Iraqi government and military courts (State)
Killed (estimate)
No reliable estimate
Category
Persecution
Confidence
Medium

Summary

After Iraq entered the 1948 war against Israel, the government imposed martial law and official measures against Jews: dismissals from public service, restrictions on travel and on buying and selling property, and mass arrests. In July 1948 Zionism was made a capital offense; hundreds of Jews were tried, fined or imprisoned. When Shafiq Ades was hanged in Basra on 23 September 1948, about 450 Jews were already in jail; further arrests followed in October 1949. Sources do not describe a named city-wide pogrom in 1948 comparable to the Farhud; a feared massacre in Baghdad after the 1947 partition vote was averted when martial law was declared.

Sub-events

  1. Execution of Shafiq Ades

    23 September 1948 · Basra (Al-Ashar)

Sources

  1. Iraq Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  2. Abraham Ben-Yaacob / Nissim Kazzaz, Baghdad. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  3. Adi Schwartz, The Adas Affair. Tablet Magazine (2022)
  4. Jews of Iraq. Jewish Virtual Library
  5. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, The Farhud. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,500,000[16]c. 1948DellaPergola's Fundamentals Table 2 gives 11.5 million Jews worldwide in 1948.
  • Kingdom of Iraq: 135,000[39]c. 1948Same USHMM 1940s community size; the article adds that by 1951 about 124,000 of 135,000 Iraqi Jews had immigrated to Israel. No separate opened census total for 1948 alone.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
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  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
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  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
  13. Joseph Jacobs, Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  16. Israel Bartal and Kenneth B. Moss, The Jews of the Russian Empire in the Late 19th Century. The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
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  23. US Jewish Population Pocket Demographics 2.0. Berman Jewish DataBank / Jewish Federations of North America (2018)
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  25. Changes in the Jewish Population of the United States, 1949–1950. American Jewish Year Book 1951, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1951)
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  31. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Appendix A: Sources and Methodology for Section 2 (Jewish and total population in Germany-Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Authors' appendix PDF (citing Weinryb, Stampfer, Kupovetsky, Guggenheim, Toch, Battenberg, Israel) (2018)
  32. Kirsten E. Schulze, The Jews of Lebanon between Coexistence and Conflict. Internet Archive full text
  33. Jews in Arab Countries. American Jewish Year Book excerpt, Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1978)
  34. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, The Farhud. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  35. Joseph Rothschild (tabulated), Interwar East European Census Data. Lawrence University course materials
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  43. Bulgaria. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  46. France. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  47. Belgium. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  48. Norway. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  49. Denmark. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  50. Greece. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  51. Lithuania. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  52. German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  53. Statistics of Jews (World and US Jewish Population). American Jewish Year Book 1946–1947, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1947)
  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  56. Jewish Populations in the Arab World. Jewish Virtual Library (citing Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2021 / AJYB 2023)
  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
  59. EHRI Country Report — Tunisia. European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
  60. Leon Shapiro, World Jewish Population. American Jewish Year Book 1981 (estimates for 1979), via Berman Jewish DataBank (1981)
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
  63. Argentina Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
  65. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the Uzbek SSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)