74 | APRIL 14 • 2022
by the Baathist regime to
imprison, torture and execute
Kurdish men, women and
children suspected of opposing
the government. On display
are tanks supplied by the U.S.
government to Saddam Hussein
during the Iraq-Iran War, which
he subsequently used against
his Kurdish citizens.
The Kurds lament President
Donald Trump pulling troops
out of Syria, which resulted in
Turkey bombing Kurdish forces
and forcing tens of thousands
of Syrian Kurds to flee their
homes.
We entered the museum
through the Hall of Mirrors,
whose walls are adorned with
182,000 shards of glass, reminis-
cent of the Children’s Memorial
at Yad Vashem and representing
the number of victims killed
by Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.
Above were 6,000 ceiling lights
representing the number of
villages wiped off the map
during the late-1980s during a
campaign known as the Anfal,
meaning “Spoils of War ‘’ in
Arabic.
A new section of the muse-
um honors Kurdish soldiers
who were martyred in the fight
against ISIS, including female
fighters, whom ISIS feared
most. In the city of Duhok, we
had breakfast at a cafe where
the walls are adorned from
top to bottom with photos of
Kurdish soldiers martyred fight-
ing ISIS, with 25% of the cafe’s
profits going directly to their
families.
The Graveyard & Monument
for the Barzani Victims of
Genocide displays the remains
of 8,000 Kurdish boys and men
from the Barzani tribe, who
were alleged to have supported
Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
In July 1983, men from the
Barzani tribe, some as young as
10 years old, were kidnapped
by the Iraqi army and never
heard from again. It was only
after Saddam Hussein’s defeat
in 2003 that mass graves were
discovered in the south, and
the mystery surrounding their
disappearance was solved. The
haunting museum features
identification documents, cloth-
ing and even prosthetic teeth
belonging to the victims, some
of whom were buried alive in
mass graves.
We were the only tourists at
Lalish, the holiest site for the
4,000-year-old Yazidi religion,
which ISIS considered devil
worship. The Yazidis have some
unique traditions, including a
prohibition of wearing the color
blue and consuming pumpkin,
fish and lettuce. We visited the
temple where Yazidis are meant
to make a pilgrimage at least
once in their lifetime. We had to
remove our shoes when enter-
ing the temple and had to step
over door thresholds, as these
are meant to be the resting
place of angels.
I had first heard of the Yazidis
when it was reported that ISIS
was killing Yazidi men and sell-
ing Yazidi women as sex slaves.
This atrocity made international
headlines when former Yazidi
sex slave Nadia Murad was
awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace
Prize. There are possibly today
more Iraqi Yazidis living in
Germany than in Iraq itself.
Today Israel is home to more
than 200,000 Jewish citizens
of Kurdish descent. We got a
taste of Kurdish-Jewish history
when we visited Amadiya, an
ancient Jewish city with a rich
Jewish history, where the Iraqi
Kurdistan government believes
the biblical prophet Ezekiel is
buried.
As a Jew, I identified themes
in the Kurdish narrative not
dissimilar from our own,
including a transnational iden-
tity, statelessness, genocide and
resistance.
Despite being in Iraq, I felt
completely safe in Kurdistan,
and encourage others looking
to travel off the beaten track to
visit and learn about a people
most of us know very little
about.
Dan Brotman is the executive director
of the Windsor Jewish Federation &
Community Center. Iraq was his 73rd
country visited to-date.
“AS A JEW, I IDENTIFIED THEMES IN
THE KURDISH NARRATIVE NOT
DISSIMILAR FROM OUR OWN …
A TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY,
STATELESSNESS, GENOCIDE
AND RESISTANCE.”
TRAVEL
continued from page 72
Celebrating Nowruz with
locals in the village of Akre.