An Illinois House resolution calling on the U.S. Department of State to reconsider returning Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq passed unanimously out of the Illinois House Interational Trades & Commerce Committee on Thursday. Suzanne Strassberger, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago's Associate Vice President of Government & Community Partnerships and registered lobbyist, signed on in support of House Joint Resolution 68, which was filed by State Representative David Harris in January.
Harris
filed the Resolution in an attempt “to urge the United States
Department of State to renegotiate with the Government of Iraq … to ensure
that the Iraqi Jewish Archive collection be kept in a place where its
long-term preservation … can be guaranteed.”
The State
Department recently announced its plan to return the Iraqi Jewish Archive
collection, currently on display at the U.S. National Archives in Washington,
D.C., to the Iraqi government this summer, stating the Iraqi people are the
rightful owners.
Under the George W. Bush Administration,
shortly after Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, the Pentagon assigned Middle
East expert and 27-year Pentagon official Harold Rhode, an Orthodox Jew, to
work for the U.S. occupation authority through Operation Iraqi Freedom. When
Rhode arrived in Bagdad that April, he learned through on-site intelligence
officers that thousands of centuries-old Iraqi Jewish archives were
discovered in the basement of Hussein’s intelligence service
headquarters. For years, during Hussein’s rule, his
intelligence operatives improperly seized papers from synagogues and Jewish
families, mostly during random searches or shortly before Jewish families
emigrated, in an attempt to marginalize the Jewish people and Jewish culture
in Iraq.
During his visit in 2003, Rhode personally
arranged for the artifacts to be shipped directly to the U.S. National
Archives to be cleaned, preserved, and properly stored. A portion of these
artifacts recently went on display at the Archives, which includes 2,700
books and 10,000 documents.
Among these documents are a
200-year-old Talmud from Vienna, a 19th
century Passover Haggadah published in Bagdad, a copy of “Ethics of the
Father,” published in 1928 in Livorno, Italy with handwritten notes in
Hebrew, and a collection of rabbinical sermons made in Germany in 1962. When
Rhode learned that these Jewish archives could be shipped back to Iraq, he
equated the return to “the giving of the personal effects of Jews killed in
the Holocaust back to Germany.”
Although
part of an original agreement between the State Department and the Iraqi
Government, U.S. Congress is pushing back and trying to stop the return of
these archives to Iraq by strongly encouraging the State Department to
reconsider through resolution. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed Resolution
333, calling for the State Department to re-negotiate its original agreement,
and a similar resolution is awaiting a vote in the House.
Rep. Harris feels strongly on this issue, both on a personal and
professional level.
"Having served in Iraq
for 14 months, I was concerned about what would happen to the artifacts if
they were returned to the Iraqi government,” he said. “The decision to
return them should be renegotiated so that the artifacts are returned to the
original Jewish owners, if possible, and if that is not possible, then
returned to the Jewish community where they would be respected and
preserved."
With this resolution, Harris hopes the
Illinois General Assembly’s support will help influence the appropriate
government authorities to reconsider and keep the Iraqi Jewish Archives in a
location that is accessible to scholars and Iraqi Jews around the world.
Since its filing on Jan. 20, Joint House Resolution 68 has received
bipartisan support, with Deputy Majority Leader Rep. Lou Lang, Rep. Michael
Bost, Rep. Scott Drury and Rep. Jack Franks as co-sponsors. Harris will now read it and
attempt to have it passed on the floor of the Illinois General Assembly.
The Jewish Federation will continue to work closely with Harris to pass the resolution.
