Iraqi Jewish Archive exhibition

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Rescued from Saddam, Iraqi Jewish archive finally on display. Some of the thousands of Jewish items recovered by US troops from a flooded Baghdad basement have been painstakingly restored for public display. But should they return to Iraq next year? (Ben Zehavi). Excerpts:

This week, a full decade after their discovery, two dozen items from the Iraqi Jewish Archive are on public display for the first time at the National Archives in an exhibition called, “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage.”

Highlights of the exhibit include:

• A Hebrew Bible with Commentaries from 1568
  
• A Babylonian Talmud from 1793
  
• A Torah scroll fragment from Genesis
  
• A Zohar (book of mysticism) from 1815
  
• A Passover Haggadah from 1902 handwritten and decorated by an Iraqi Jewish youth
  
• An official 1918 letter to the chief rabbi regarding the allotment of sheep for Rosh Hashanah
  
• Materials from Baghdad Jewish schools, including exam grades and a letter to the College Entrance Exam Board in Princeton regarding SAT scores; and
  
• A lunar calendar in Hebrew and Arabic from 1972-73, one of the last examples of Hebrew items produced in Baghdad

[...]

Harold Rhode, an expert on Islamic affairs at the US Defense Department who led the discovery team in 2003, said he is “horrified” to think that the material will be returned to Baghdad.

“[These items] were stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community,” he told The Jewish Week. Returning it, he said, “would be comparable to the US returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis.”

There's also a video and a link to a petition to keep the archive from returning to Iraq. Lots of background here and links.