In 2012, I returned to Detroit for a Museum co-sponsored two-event visit. I completed and updated the 2006 warning about the Iranian nuclear program in a presentation at the nearby synagogue. In the Museum auditorium, we helped set the stage for a global recognition of The Farhud, the 1941 Arab-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad that attempted to exterminate the Jews of Baghdad. This was referred to by some as the long-overlooked Sephardic Kristallnacht. While the idea was bold and new when explored within the walls of the Museum in 2012, it eventually caught traction worldwide. Last year, together with other Jewish leaders in a live-streamed global event in the United Nations, we proclaimed International Farhud Day. Earlier this year, on the June 1, 2016 75th anniversary of the pogrom, special commemorations were held in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., in New York in a Manhattan synagogue, in a London synagogue attended by diplomats and dignitaries, and also in the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. While this observance is now globally known, the Detroit Museum boldly confronted the topic four years earlier.

Detroit Holocaust Museum Enters New Phase but Stays Strangely Mum

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