In 1950, Baghdad was home to 160,000 Jews, a group consisting of 40 percent of the population in the city. Today, just 22 remain in Iraq’s capital.

“The Last Jews of Baghdad” is a film documenting the exodus of these people from Iraq and their attempts to survive in other cities of the country and abroad.

The film was screened last Wednesday in Davis Auditorium. Adriana Davis, the film’s co-director, discussed the documentary after the screening.

“The point of the film,” Davis said, “is not just to document the history, culture and the community but also to inspire everyone to learn about the Jews in Iraq, a community that may not exist after being around for 2,500 years.”

The film begins with clips from the 1930s with the arrival of Nazism in Iraq prior to World War II.

At that time, Nazi activists convinced Iraqi leaders to adopt policies of anti-Semitism. According to Davis, “This is the first legal evidence that there were Nazis in Iraq prior to World War II.”

Following the war, anti-Semitism continued, as Jews were consistently discriminated against, both in law and in practice.

In the subsequent 50 years, restrictive laws regarding Jews owning property and their civil rights shrank the number of Jews able to live in Baghdad.

The film documents this repression through interviews with Jews who left Iraq in the 1970s.

Those interviewed talked about arbitrary imprisonment and even torture of those practicing Judaism.

Because of such persecution, many Jews left Iraq. But since Iraqi law forbade Jews from traveling, many escaped and settled in Israel.

“Israel is now the largest community of Iraqi Jews, many of whom hold prominent positions,” said Davis.

She described the film as “a very unique documentation which preserves pictorial evidence for the people who weren’t allowed to bring any pictures out of the country”.

Additionally, the film discusses Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and the subsequent degeneration of conditions for Jews who had remained in Iraq.

Under Hussein, the few communities of Jews left in Baghdad were forced to leave the country due to the constant threat of arrest, torture, and even murder.

The film has been shown at Saddam Hussein’s trial as “evidence that he created a legal dissemination of the Jewish community,” said Davis.

She said the documentary is a compilation “stories about people who are underreported, under represented, and misunderstood in history.”