1947 ADEN POGROM

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JEWS OF ADEN: 1947 ADEN POGROM

Location	Aden, Aden Protectorate
Date	December 3rd, 1947
Target	Jews of Aden
Attack type	Violent pogrom, massacre
Death(s)	82 Jews killed
Injured	76 injured
Perpetrator(s)	Arab Muslim mob, Aden Protectorate Levies

The 1947 Aden pogrom was one of the most violent attacks on Mizrahi Jewish communities in the Middle East in the modern times, resulting in at least 82 Jews murdered and a widescale devastation of local Jewish community of Aden, bringing an end to its millennia long history.

Background

By mid 20th century Aden was populated by a community of several thousand Jews. In the 1930s there were rare, religiously motivated outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence and a relatively small riot in 1932. In 1933, anti-Jewish attacks occurred in Aden, with many Jews stoned and stabbed by Arab rioters. These outbreaks of violence were of minor significance, when compared to the terror unleashed three days after the November 1947 UN vote on the partition of Palestine, in which the lives of the Adani were irreparably shattered.

The Pogrom

Following November 29, 1947 vote by the UN on partition of the British Mandate for Palestine, wide scale protests took place across the Arab countries and communities, with Aden being no exception. Shortly after their beginning, the protests in Aden erupted into unrestrained bloody violence against the Jews, triggered by the false accusation of Jews for murder of two local girls.

The pogrom, that erupted on December 2, 1947, was devastating - 82 Jews were murdered and 76 wounded; 106 out of the 170 existing Jewish shops in Aden were robbed bare and eight were partially emptied. Four synagogues were "burnt to the ground" and 220 Jewish houses were burned and looted or damaged. The Selim Girl's School in 1929 which was located next to King George V Jewish Boys School and was also gutted in the 1947 riots.

With no British troops in Aden at that particular time, the Jewish community felt some relief, when they heard that the Aden Protectorate Levies were to be bought in to protect them. But the Levies, being Arab Muslims, were seen to turn a blind eye to the violence and themselves fired indiscriminately on the Jews, killing many.

Aftermath

Following the bloody riot, Adeni Jewish community almost entirely emptied, together with most of the Yemeni Jewish community. In response to an increasingly perilous situation, most of the Yemenite Jewish community had been secretly evacuated to Israel between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation Magic Carpet.

The final destruction of the Adeni Jewish community took place in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War and after Aden had received independence from the British (Aden had been ceded to the British since 1839). Murder, looting, new destruction to the synagogues - remaining Jews were finally evacuated with the help of the British, when they discovered the Arabs were planning to massacre of the remaining Jewish community. The Jewry of Aden became virtually "the community that was."

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