On 1 June 1941 a pogrom, known as the Farhud, broke out in Baghdad. Over the course of 48 hours, homes and businesses were looted, and hundreds of Jews were injured and killed. The Farhud is widely recognized as an event inspired by Nazi ideology and marked a turning point in Iraqi-Jewish history.

Sephardi Voices UK documents the testimonies of Jews from the Middle East, North Africa and Iran. In this event, we will introduce the SVUK archive, explore testimonies of those who lived through the Farhud, and discuss the long-term effects of the Farhud on Baghdad’s Jews.

About the speakers:

Dr Bea Lewkowicz is a social anthropologist and oral historian and is the director of two oral history archives, the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony and the Sephardi Archive. She is a member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, School of Advanced Study, University pf London. Her research interests include oral history; trauma and memory; diasporas and displacement; and nationalism and ethnicity. She has worked on many oral history projects and has directed and produced a wide range of testimony-based films. She has also curated several exhibitions, such as Continental Britons, Double Exposure, Sephardi Voices, and Still in Our Hands: Kinder Life Portraits. Her latest publication, Émigré Voices: Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria (Brill:2021), presents twelve oral history interviews with men and women who came to Britain as Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the late 1930s.

Daisy Abboudi has been Deputy Director of Sephardi Voices UK since 2017. She has conducted a hundred oral history interviews over the course of her career. In addition to her work at Sephardi Voices UK, Daisy runs Tales of Jewish Sudan. Her work has been featured in the BBC, Associated Press, Al Arabiya English and in several Jewish publications.

Event guidelines for those joining online:

1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.

2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).

3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

4. The event will be recorded for the Library’s YouTube channel and will be shared at a later date.