Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Forgotten Refugees

The Forgotten Refugees is a documentary about the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century. The Forgotten Refugees explores the history and destruction of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities, some of which had existed for over 2,500 years.




Employing extensive testimony of survivors from Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Iran, the film recounts the stories – of joy and of suffering – that nearly a million individuals have carried with them for so long. Segments on the contributions of Middle Eastern Jews to politics, business and music, testify to the enormously rich cultures which fleeing Jews left behind.




The film weaves personal stories with dramatic archival footage of rescue missions, historic images of exodus and resettlement, and analysis by contemporary scholars, to tell the story of how and why the Arab world’s Jewish population declined from one million in 1945 to several thousand today.

Click here for the official website.

1 comment:

cinndave said...

1,000,000 Jews? I'm guessing that this travesty was eclipsed by the Holocaust at the time, making it historically anticlimactic. That's why we don't hear much about it.

Sure makes the story of the so-called "Tragedy of Palestine" look like a melodramatic racist rant by comparison. That bit about the UN was very telling; they hate the Jews more than they love their fellow Palestinians. Looks like the Muslim world inflicted the brain drain to Israel on themselves.