Iraq’s last Jewish doctor dies at 61
By David Ian Klein March 22, 2021
Dr. Thafer Eliyahu, one of the last Jews remaining in Iraq died last week. Mustafa Salim, the Washington Post’s Baghdad reporter announced on Twitter.
Dr. Thafer Eliyahu, Orthopedic doctor in Wasiti hospital in Baghdad passed away . He is one of the last Iraqi Jews in Baghdad, he was called the doctor of the poor people since he always used to treat those who can’t afford the costs for free. pic.twitter.com/8jgQvsaY9C
— Mustafa Salim (@Mustafa_salimb) March 16, 2021
Remaining in Baghdad, during the tumultuous years of the U.S. invasion, Dr. Eliyahu was known for treating the sick and injured even as bombs fell overhead, the Times of Israel reported. According to the Iraq Body Count Project, more than 6,000 Baghdadi civilians died in the first year of the Second Gulf War alone, with thousands more injured.
Though Jews had lived in the area of Iraq for more than 2,700 years, before Eliyahu’s death barely ten Jews were estimated to remain in the country, mostly in the captial city of Baghdad.
Not long before Eliyahu’s birth, Baghdad had been one of the most Jewish cities in the world –, numbering more than 40% Jewish, according to a 1917 Ottoman census. He was born around 1960 just after the mass exodus of Iraqi Jewry, though more than 150,000 lived in the country. An estimated 96% of the Jews had left by 1951, due to antisemitism in the country.
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief
