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Iraqi Jewish Archive Should Be Protected and Accessible, 42 Groups Say

(JNS.org) 42 groups, led by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, on Tuesday called on the U.S. government to assure that the Iraqi Jewish Archive, which America plans to return to Iraq, would be protected and continually accessible to Iraqi Jewish communities around the world. The U.S. National Archives is now displaying 24 out of 2,700 Jewish books and ancient documents that were recovered in the basement of the Iraqi intelligence ministry (Mukhabarat) during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The collection is to be returned to the Iraqi government when its restoration is complete. But the Iraqi Jewish community says the Saddam Hussein government originally confiscated the materials from a synagogue in 1984. The Conference of Presidents called on Secretary of State John Kerry to "consult with representative bodies of Iraq's expatriate Jewish community and officials before any further decision is made" on the archive.
2013-11-13 00:00:00
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