When the U.S. and its allies overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, they seized control of his government’s vast archives. Samuel Helfont describes the “tortured journey” that these troves of documents have taken since then, as well as some of the noteworthy things they contain:
Saddam and the Baathists had an anti-Semitic obsession with Jews. They not only tracked the dwindling population of Iraqi Jews, including those who had converted, but the Iraqi Intelligence Service also maintained an archive that included the personal property of Jews who had fled Iraq during their mass exodus in the 1950s. Apparently, Iraqi intelligence officers thought things such as medieval religious texts and modern school notebooks could provide some insight into the Jewish cabal that secretly ran the world through shadowy conspiracies.
The Americans found the Jewish records in the flooded basement of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. They took the waterlogged documents and artifacts outside into the arid desert air; they rolled Torah scrolls out in the sun in an attempt to dry them. It soon became evident, however, that these records and artifacts risked being eaten away by mold. They needed professional attention from a conservationist. So, these archives . . . were removed from Iraq.
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