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.