Lost Jewish Voices of Indonesia with Deborah Cassrels

Journalist Deborah Cassrels' work led to an investigative article on Dutch Jewish descendants of north Sulawesi, which in turn, uncovered these largely unknown journeys and lives of Sephardi Iraqi Jews who emigrated to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the early 1900s during waves of persecution and instability in Baghdad. About 600 Iraqi Jews settled in Surabaya, east Java, following the Asian trade routes, word of mouth and those who had found a safe haven.

Told through the lens of primary sources, descendants and eyewitnesses, this intergenerational saga depicts a minority culture whose Javanese idyll was shattered by World War II and subsequent revolution. Following traumatic years in Japanese internment camps in Indonesia many “Baghdadis’’ migrated to Australia.