Iraqi Jewish Archive to go on the road

[hrmjustin]

Lauren Markoe

WASHINGTON (RNS) After the U.S. Army rescued a trove of Jewish artifacts from the basement of Saddam Hussein’s secret police headquarters, many American descendants of Iraq’s once vibrant Jewish community had an urgent question.

Is the U.S. going to return these artifacts to war-torn Iraq?

The answer was yes. Over the objections of many Jews whose families came from Iraq, the U.S. had agreed that the “Iraqi Jewish Archive,” painstakingly restored in a laboratory outside Washington, would return to Iraq in the summer of 2014.

But the summer of 2014 is nearly over, and the archive is still in the U.S. Now a new plan will delay at least some of the collection’s journey back to Baghdad, where it had been discovered — moldy and disintegrating — in the flooded basement of the former dictator’s intelligence headquarters.

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/09/05/iraqi-jewish-archive-still-go-back-iraq/

[goldent]

1. This is fascinating

I think it should be held in the US until there is some stability in Iraq. I think the US should make it easy for scholars, and Iraqi scholars in particular to study the material.

[hrmjustin]

2. I agree. It needs to be kept safe.

[okasha]

3. I also agree.

I think that "repatriation" of both objects and human remains should take cultural as well as territorial provenance into consideration.