Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center traces details of five soldiers who fought in World War II • They now appeal to the general public: "Help us get them out of anonymity"
Illustrative image // Photo: From Wikipedia
Decades after World War II, and with most fighters serving in this war around the age of 100, the Babylon Jewish Heritage Center comes out in public reading in an attempt to get information about Iraqi Jews who served as soldiers in one of the Allies' army during World War II. The top priority, of course, is direct testimony of soldiers who served in the war, but they hope to get more information, including every name, personal story and details, in order to deepen knowledge about them, anonymize them and perpetuate their stories.
"During the digitization work we do for the photo archive, we came across a stack of photos of two soldiers who are often photographed together in all kinds of places in Europe - Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc.," said Ginat Salman, a curator of the center's treasure department. "These photos were very unusual in the landscape, so I decided to look more deeply into the story behind them. After checking with the photo donor, it became clear that her father, Joseph Ben-Zion, had immigrated illegally from Iraq to Israel and joined the British army to fight the Nazis."
From the exhibition // Photo: Babylon Jewish Heritage Center
After consulting the center's staff, it was decided to investigate more in depth. "We started looking for information about other Iraqi Jews who joined the Allied armies." But searches in the IDF archives and various museums around the country yielded nothing.
The museum decided to set up a small exhibition at the entrance called "It was their most beautiful hour", consisting of a number of details, documents and pictures of four soldiers who managed to locate. Following a Facebook post, information has been received about a fifth soldier, and the museum is now hoping to obtain information about other soldiers.
Appealing to the general public, museum staff seek help locating photographs, documents, and objects of Iraqi Jewish soldiers who fought in World War II in the Allied armies and subsequently immigrated to Israel or moved to other countries. You can contact the museum by email: otsrut@bjhc.org.il
Director of the Babylon Jewish Heritage Center, Aliza Dayan Greenhouse: "The archive of the Babylon Jewish Heritage Center contains thousands of treasures through which we constantly learn about the glorious heritage of Babylonian Jews and the involvement of Iraqi Jews in major periods and events in history. We aimed to shed light on the personal stories of these soldiers with the aim of perpetuating them in the history pages and at the same time deepening their knowledge of the part Iraqi Jewish soldiers took in World War II and their heroic actions. We invite anyone with information about this to contact us. "