The Farhud was a two-day anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941, during the Jewish festival of Shavuot. It broke out after the collapse of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani’s pro-Axis coup and the return of Regent Abd al-Ilah. Rioters killed Jews, injured hundreds, and looted Jewish homes and businesses.
How violence broke out
In April 1941, Rashid Ali and military allies overthrew the regent’s government. Iraqi Jews were accused by nationalists of supporting Britain, while Nazi propaganda and antisemitic agitation circulated in the country. When the regent returned to Baghdad on June 1, Jews went into the streets believing the immediate political danger had passed. Violence then targeted them. Soldiers and policemen who had backed the coup and pro-Axis youth groups were among those who incited or led attacks; civilians also joined in. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum account records the political setting and the involvement of specific groups.
Casualties and damage
Estimates differ. The official Iraqi commission reported 128 Jews killed and 210 injured, while community estimates cited by historians put Jewish deaths between 150 and 180. More than 1,500 Jewish shops and homes were damaged or looted. The scale of killing and the targeting of civilians made the Farhud a defining trauma for Baghdad’s Jewish community. The community had numbered about 90,000 in Baghdad in the 1940s.
Aftermath was not immediate mass departure
The pogrom deepened fear and insecurity, and some Jews left Iraq in its immediate aftermath. Many returned after conditions stabilized. Iraqi Jewish life continued through the 1940s; the large migration to Israel occurred mainly in 1950–51, amid later state restrictions and insecurity. The Farhud matters as a violent rupture, not as a simple, immediate cause that made every later choice inevitable. For context on Jewish community life elsewhere in the region, see Egyptian Jewish life before 1948.