“Jews have lived in Iraq for thousands of years. As with every other community in Iraq, they played a crucial role in building our country and contributing to our culture.” This surprising statement was published Feb. 3 in an open letter from Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States.

Faily is referring to the Iraqi Jewish archive, which was found by US Marines in 2003 in one of the cellars of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s General Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat). The cellar was partially flooded, and hundreds of the crates that it contained were rotting, but the US forces immediately realized that they had stumbled across a real treasure trove, which it turned out included ancient pieces of Judaica, holy books, documents and photographs depicting the life of the Jewish community in Baghdad. This community lived in the now-Muslim-dominated society for thousands of years while taking care to preserve its Jewish character, culture and religion.

The crates were transferred to the United States so that their contents could undergo restoration. The project lasted 10 years. Last November, a few of the items were put on public display for 2½ months in a successful exhibition in Washington. The exhibit opened Feb. 4 in New York. Faily wrote his letter on the occasion of the grand opening.

“I was privileged,” he wrote, “to have participated in both the opening ceremony for the Iraqi National Jewish Archive at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., last October, and at the burial ceremony of 49 Torah scroll fragments in New York in December. This is a testament to the Iraqi government’s commitment to supporting the Iraqi diaspora including the Iraqi-Jewish Community.”