“It’s not a sad story, really, because her legacy lives on,” Shina said.
Discovery, preservation
The Jewish cache was originally found by a group of U.S. troops from a “mobile exploitation team” assigned to search for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Most of the items dated from the late 1800s and from the early to mid-1900s. Most of the books are written in Hebrew; many documents are in Arabic.
After the befouled water was removed from the Baghdad basement, Hamburg said, the items were placed outside to dry.
They were then stored in 27 metal trunks for safekeeping. But “between the heat and humidity, everything became quite moldy,” Hamburg said.
The trunks were turned over to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, which asked the National Archives for help.
The Archives urged that the materials be frozen; they were placed in the freezer truck of a local businessman.
In June 2003, Hamburg and her colleague Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, director of conservation for the Archives, flew to Baghdad to assess the situation.
Hamburg said an arrangement was made with Iraqi representatives to bring the items to the United States for preservation and exhibition, after which they would be returned to Iraq.
The materials were flown to a site in Texas, where they were vacuum-freeze-dried. In fall 2003, they were brought to the Archives.
Every scrap of paper was kept. A database was created. And all the items were carefully wrapped.
When the State Department came up with $3 million in 2011, the next phase of the project got underway.
That included hiring more staff, buying equipment, stabilizing and digitizing, and packing the material.
The staff workers also began creating a Web site on which the digitized images could be posted and preparing the exhibit.
The material is scheduled to go back to Iraq by June.
Asked whether there was any concern about that, Hamburg said, “The agreement was that it will go back.”
A family’s escape
Maurice Shohet, 63, of Northwest Washington, was also a student at Baghdad’s Jewish schools, and he served as a consultant on the Archives project.
His name appears on at least one salvaged Shamash school roster for 1966 and 1967.
He and 12 members of his family escaped from Iraq in 1970, amid the increasing repression of Jews.
Shohet said in an interview last week that his family’s roots went back at least 250 years in Iraq. “The community is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world,” he said.
Before their escape, Jews were not permitted to leave Baghdad. Shohet’s father lost his textile-
importing permit and was forced to carry a yellow identity card proving that the family had been long-term residents of Iraq.
Jews — including Shohet — were watched by Iraqi intelligence. They were not accepted to university. And some of Shohet’s friends were arrested and executed.
As a result, he said, he and his two brothers began to pressure their parents to leave. It was clear that there was no future in Iraq. “We had nothing,” he said. His parents, who were in their late 50s, were hesitant.
But about 4 a.m. on Sept. 2, 1970, he and a dozen family members squeezed into a large rented car and headed north for the Iranian border.
They left almost everything behind in their rented home, he said, but there were no regrets.
They crossed into Iran after a harrowing journey on foot, terrified by guard dogs and searchlights.
Shohet made his way to the United States in 1981.
Shohet, now employed by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he went back to Baghdad in 2004 on an exploratory business trip.
While he was there, he went to see his old house — 34 years after he had left it.
“I didn’t even try to think who was living there,” Shohet said. He was asked by those accompanying him whether he wanted to stop in: “I said, ‘No, no. Who am I to come to show off? I just wanted to [see] how it looks from the outside.’ ”
How did it look?
“The same,” he said.
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