Jewish Film Club: AGM and screening of The Forgotten Refugees

Please note, this screening will be preceded by the Jewish Film Club (Jewish Arts 1990) AGM. Timings to be confirmed.

The Forgotten Refugees explores the history and destruction of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, some of which had existed for over 2500 years. Using the extensive testimony of refugees from Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, the film recounts the stories of joy and suffering that nearly one 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 analyses of 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.

"The Forgotten Refugees is an essential corrective to the false impression that only the Arabs of Palestine suffered as a consequence of Israel's War of Independence. The reality is that entire Jewish communities, in some instances predating not only Islam but Christianity, were destroyed with innocent Jews scattered across the world. This dramatic story is vividly recalled in rare documentary footage and in the personal accounts of those who endured this trauma, but succeeded in rebuilding their lives in Israel and elsewhere ."

The film will be followed by a Q&A from Lyn Julius, whose parents fled from Iraq in 1950.