Iranian Jews

Although Iran and Israel are bitter enemies, few know that Iran is home to the largest number of Jews anywhere in the Middle East outside Israel.While Jewish communities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria have all but vanished, Iran is home to 25,000 Jews and most are determined to remain no matter what the pressures - as proud of their Iranian culture as of their Jewish roots. Jews have lived in Persia for nearly 3,000 years - the descendants of slaves from Babylon saved by Cyrus the Great.

"Khomeini, recognised Jews as a religious minority that should be protected. As a result Jews have one representative in the Iranian parliament. Imam Khomeini made a distinction between Jews and Zionists and he supported us," says Jewish community leader Unees Hammami. Just as it radically transformed Muslim society, the Iranian revolution calso changed the Jews. Families that had been secular before, started keeping kosher and strictly observing rules against driving on Shabbat. They stopped going to restaurants, cafes and cinemas - many such establishments were closed down - and the synagogue perforce became the focal point of their social lives.

Jewish women, like Muslim women, are required by law to keep their heads covered, although most eschew the chador for a simple scarf. But Jews, unlike Muslims, can keep small flasks of home-brewed wine or arrack to drink within the privacy of their homes - in theory, for religious purposes. Some Hebrew schools are co-ed, and men and women dance with each other at weddings.

Synagogue in Esfahan (photo by G. Ross)

Nazi atrocities on Jewish women

Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus(Carpatho-Ukraine) who have been selected for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau, walk toward the gas chambers.


A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive in the ravine after the mass execution. (1942).

Jewish women stripping before their deaths.,USSR, 1941

Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments.

Members of the 21st Latvian Police Battalion assemble a group of Jewish women for execution.

German police and Ukrainian collaborators in civilian clothes look on as Jewish women are forced to undress before their execution.


Naked Jewish women being driven towards Gas Chamber V-Auschwitz ll Birkenau.

Members of a Lithuanian militia unit force a group of Jewish women from Panevezys to undress before their execution in the Pajuoste Forest.

Jewish women from the Mizocz Ghetto in the Ukraine, which held roughly 1,700 Jews. Some are holding infants as they are forced to wait in a line before their execution by Germans and Ukrainian collaborators.

Jewish women and children are ordered to undress prior to their execution.

A Latvian policeman leads a group of Jewish women to the execution site in Latvia.

A group of naked Jewish women and girls walk to the execution site on the beach near Liepaja, Latvia.

A group of Jewish women stand at the edge of an open mass grave facing the sea before their murder.

A Jewish woman pleads for her life at a mass-murder scene.jpg