#reading the exact details on the farhood was. bad. very painful.

[clarabosswald]

86 year old Shlomo Manzur is the oldest hostage currently held in Hamas captivity.

He was born in 1938 in Iraq, and as a young child he survived the Farhood pogrom.

The Farhood took place during the Jewish Shavu'ot holiday. Between 180 to over 1000 of the Jews of Baghdad were murdered in the pogrom. A Jewish intelligence report had stated that about 120 Jewish patients were murdered in hospitals via toxic injections. Mass robberies took place, which targeted some 50 thousand Jews. Jewish businesses were marked in red beforehand, as targets. Homes were robbed and then flooded by turning on all the water taps inside. People were raped and butchered in broad daylight, including children and the elderly. The events, which went on for two days, were later nicknamed "The Kristallnacht of Iraqi Jews". Some see it as a turning point and a key event in the chain of antisemitic events which eventually motivated Iraqi Jews to flee the country. Many of the Farhood victims were buried in a mass grave in the Jewish Cemetery in Baghdad - a cemetery which was later relocated with the intention to build a skyscraper on its grounds.

Hadassah, Shlomo Manzur's sister, said last month: "He was kidnapped weighing 58 kg. We hope that he is not starving, and that he receives the conditions to live. Precisely on the day when the International Holocaust Day is celebrated, I want to ask: how is he going through such a tragedy again - and the world is silent? They murdered, raped, abused babies, kidnapped, beheaded, looted and burned stores marked with red paint ahead of time. It was the Kristallnacht for Iraqi Jews and the world was silent. Shlomo saw sights that accompanied him all his life. If we thought then 'never again' - we never imagined that such scenes would return when we have a sovereign state. My brother Shlomo was kidnapped from his home, his fortress, and these days he is going through another Holocaust in his old age. The heart aches with longing and thinking what goes through him in the dark. I talk about him, and my heart skips a beat."