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Rescue or Return: The Fate of the Iraqi Jewish Archive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2013

Bruce P. Montgomery*
Affiliation:
Professor/Faculty Director of Archives and Special Collections, Archives, Campus Box 184, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, Email: bruce.montgomery@colorado.edu.

Abstract

Shortly following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an American mobile exploitation team was diverted from its mission in hunting for weapons for mass destruction to search for an ancient Talmud in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police (Mukhabarat) headquarters in Baghdad. Instead of finding the ancient holy book, the soldiers rescued from the basement flooded with several feet of fetid water an invaluable archive of disparate individual and communal documents and books relating to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world. The seizure of Jewish cultural materials by the Mukhabarat recalled similar looting by the Nazis during World War II. The materials were spirited out of Iraq to the United States with a vague assurance of their return after being restored. Several years after their arrival in the United States for conservation, the Iraqi Jewish archive has become contested cultural property between Jewish groups and the Iraqi Jewish diaspora on the one hand and Iraqi cultural officials on the other. This article argues that the archive comprises the cultural property and heritage of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2013 

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