Iraqi documents are last relics of an extinct community

Two Jewish women writers with Iraqi roots have been re-discovering the documents issued, respectively, to their mother and grandmother : Mira Shamash (Rocca) is still in possession of her mother Violette’s passport. Sarah Sassoon was handed her maternal grandmother’s laissez-passer by her aunt: this was a document allowing Jews to leave Iraq in 1950 -1, but not to return.

Mira Shamash writes on Facebook:

“I took this passport to the Iraqi embassy here in London about ten years ago and they were astonished. All the staff came to look at it and many of them said “wow, this is a historical document”. Not only is this a historic document but it is a representation of a Jewish community that no longer exists in its country of origin due to persecution, ethnic cleansing and exile.

This is my mother Violette Shamash’s Iraqi passport, issued in 1945 in Jerusalem. My brother Simon was born in the British Mandate of Palestine, which is where we settled after leaving Baghdad in 1941, after the events of the antisemitic Farhud pogrom.

My family must have gone to the Iraqi consulate to renew their passports and as you can see – there are stamps at the bottom depicting a young King Faisal II who was killed in the revolution of 1958 when Abdul Karim Qasem took power. At that time, it was common for children not to have passports of their own and they were often added to their mother’s document.”

Sarah Sassoon was handed her grandmother’s laissez-passer:

Thank you to my dear aunt for finding my maternal grandmother Nagia’s Laissez-Passer Iraqi Passport – the passport of NO RETURN granted to over 120,000 Iraqi Jews (including my whole family) between 1950-52, which thanks to the Tasqit law (March 9, 1950) allowed Iraqi Jews to finally flee legally, due to antisemitic and antizionist discrimination and persecution.

Before, Iraqi Jews were not granted passports, and they had to dangerously smuggle themselves out. Note — This passport allowed a one-way journey — solely to Israel, with no option of going anywhere else. Giving up their citizenship also meant they had to painfully give up all their assets. The Iraqi government froze their bank accounts.

Sometimes it feels like I dreamed my family’s Iraqi Jewish roots — so holding this yellowed, fraying Laissez Passer in my hands feels heartbreakingly real. Paper proof of the end of ancient Babylonian Jewish presence in Iraq — where I come from.”