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Spillover of the
1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine | |
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The 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo were an attack on Syrian JewsinAleppo, Syria in December 1947, following the United Nations vote in favour of partitioning Palestine. The attack, a part of an anti-Jewish wave of unrest across the Middle East and North Africa, resulted in some 75 Jews murdered and several hundred wounded.[1] In the aftermath of the riots, half the city's Jewish population fled the city.[2]
| Part of a serieson |
| Jewish exodus from the Muslim world |
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| Background |
| Antisemitism in the Arab world |
| Exodus by country |
| Remembrance |
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Syria gained independence from France in April 1946. The Haganah's illegal immigration operative Akiva Feinstein wrote in 1947 that the new Syrian government then commenced persecuting the Jewish minority,[3] that all Jewish clerks working for the French bureaucracy were fired, and the government tried to stifle Jewish businesses.[3] At the time of the United Nations vote on November 29, 1947, the Jewish community in Aleppo numbered around 10,000 and went back around two thousand years.[4]
After the vote in favour of the partition of Palestine, the government abetted and organised Aleppo's Arab inhabitants to attack the city's Jewish population.[3][4][5] The exact number of those killed remains unknown, but estimates are put at around 75, with several hundred wounded.[1][5][6] Ten synagogues, five schools, an orphanage and a youth club, along with several Jewish shops and 150 houses were set ablaze and destroyed.[7] Damaged property was estimated to be valued at US$2.5m.[8][9] During the pogrom the Aleppo Codex, an important medieval manuscript of the Torah, was lost and feared destroyed. The book reappeared (with 40% of pages missing) in Israel in 1958.[10]
Following the attack, the Jewish community went into a steep decline. Wealthy Jews escaped the day after the pogrom and many more fled in small groups in subsequent months.[2][4] Their property was forfeited and on December 22 the Syrian Government enacted a law forbidding Jews from selling their property.[3] As of 2012, no Jews live in Aleppo.[4]
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‡ indicates the terrorist attack which caused the greatest number of casualties | |
