"He didn't talk much about what he went through in Iraq.” It was only after Shlomo Mansour, z”l, was kidnapped by Hamas that his family found his secret journal about his experiences in the Farhud, a Nazi-inspired massacre of Baghdad’s Jews. “They massacred Jews in a very brutal way: they beheaded people, cut off the limbs of babies, threw babies into wells in front of their parents, and cut off their heads. The Muslims broke into my parents' house when Shlomo was 3 years old and my sister was a baby in a crib. They beat my parents badly and shot their dog," says Hadassah, Shlomo’s sister. "After that, Shlomo ran in a panic to the roof, saw a scene from there that left an impression on him, and wrote about it in his diary, which was found after he was kidnapped. “Two Muslims were playing with the child, the baby, like a ball – and the mother was begging to take him. They impaled him and gave him to her." Shlomo witnessed such horrific anti-Jewish violence that he couldn’t bear to tell his closest loved ones. Violence of the same kind that traumatized him as a three-year-old eventually claimed his life at age 85, when Hamas murdered him and took his body captive. Shlomo’s story is unspeakably heartbreaking. It is precisely because it was too painful for him to tell that we must tell it now. May Shlomo’s memory be a blessing 💔
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