In 1933 there were about 60 Jewish families . In 1934 , Benzion Israeli found 800 inhabitants and wrote that " Sandur is a state of its own ... this is a Jewish village , an autonomous Jewish republic . " In 1935 , Walter Schwarz visited the village and gave a detailed report . He noted that it was inhabited only by Jews and that the fields and vineyards were well kept and yielded good crops . Mordechai Zaken , who investigated the history of Kurdistani Jews in the previous centuries , explained why in some reports there seemed to be only Jews residing in the village , while in other reports , the Muslim Kurds lived in the outskirts of the village . Apparently , the work of the Muslim Kurds in Sabbath disturbed the Jews , so they asked a judge from Mosul to ask the Kurds to move to the outskirts of the village . The Kurds agreed , but the Jews had to buy their houses , and so they did . After Iraq gained independence in 1932 , the position of the Jews started to deteriorate . In July 1941 it was reported in the '' Jewish Digest '' that the leader of the village expressed his wish that the 50 families living there could " sell their village and immigrate to Palestine " . During the Allied occupation of Iraq and in the backdrop of the Farhud , sporadic attacks on Jews continued throughout World War II . On December 17 , 1942 , anti-Jewish riots resulted in the murder of eight Jews in the village . In 1943 , Friedrich Simon Bodenheimer visited Sandur for an evening . He found the atmosphere disturbed by the " unfriendly attitude of the neighbouring Kurdish villages . " He claimed the Jews could not even sell their land , as the Kurds said " We will soon get it for nothing ! " With the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 , things got worse for Iraq 's Jews who were portrayed as Zionists . Their freedom of movement was restricted and many lost their jobs . In 1949 there were still about 100 families living in Sandur
Farhud
Farhud
Sandur, Iraq