August 27, 2017
Seventy years after the secret Operation Michaelberg brought 100 Jews to British Mandate Palestine by air, Israelis who were on the flights gathered with their relatives to celebrate the anniversary at the site of the former Atlit Detention Camp in Israel. A restored model of the Operation Michaelberg aircraft was on display. Hillel orchestrated Operation Michaelberg and later Operation Ezra and Nehemia, and helped smuggle Iraqi Jews through Iran, resulting in the exodus of 130,000 Jews—out of a community of 140,000—in Israel’s earliest days. Hillel, 94, told his dramatic life story to Tamar Morad, co-editor of Iraq’s Last Jews, as part of Sephardi Voices’ Iraqi Jewish Voices Project. The project will be launched at the Center for Jewish History in New York on September 11 at 7 pm. CLICK HERE for full article.
August 13, 2017
Sephardi Voices shoots its new film, Last Class in Baghdad, at the Montreal reunion of the Frank Iny, Menahem Daniel, and Shamash Schools, the last Jewish schools in Baghdad.
August 13, 2017
When alumni of the Frank Iny School, the last Jewish school in Baghdad, held a reunion last week in Montreal, it was a chance to reminisce and catch up with old friends, most of whom had fled Iraq after 1967. For blogger Marcus E. Smith, attending the event was to open his eyes to a close-knit but oppressed community, which he had no clue existed when he was a soldier in Iraq. CLICK HERE for the full article.