Adjunct Professor Carole Basri was quoted in a Hamodia article about the cultural property that comprises the Iraqi Jewish Archive.
Carole Basri, an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and Jewish refugee advocate, has been a leading advocate of preventing the Archive from returning to Iraq. She told Hamodia that while she doubts it would be adequately preserved there, the matter goes beyond practical concerns and is a simple question of rightful ownership.
“There is a bigger problem here of property expropriation,” she said. “From the 1940s and on, the Iraqis made it increasingly impossible for Jews to live in the country and, when they fled, they were not allowed to take anything with them; the state seized everything. It does not seem fair that now, the little bit of cultural heritage that survived should also be taken away from us.”