About David Kahtan

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​Growing up in the 1990s, I became deeply interested in my Iraqi heritage. My father, Moshe, was forced to flee Iraq in 1967 and seek refuge in England.

 

My family has a rich history in Iraq: my grandfather, Saleh Kahtan, served as an Iraqi Member of Parliament and Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Finance; my great-grandfather, Sassoon Murad, was a visionary communal leader; and I am a descendant of the renowned Iraqi philanthropist Saleh Daniel.

 

In 2002, I completed a Master's thesis examining the changing lives of Iraq's Jews between 1932 and 1952. Over the past 20 years, I have travelled the world researching and speaking with Iraqi Jews, documenting their experiences and preserving their stories.

 

Through more than two decades of recording personal testimonies, I have worked to preserve and share the history of Iraq's Jewish community. In 2024, I fulfilled a lifelong dream when my four-part documentary series, The Long Journey Home: The Untold Story of

Iraq's Jews, was broadcast on KAN 11. 

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As the sun sets on my father's generation—the last to witness the Farhud—I have begun a new initiative, The Farhud Project, to record the testimonies of the remaining survivors before their voices are lost to time. My goal is to interview 180 Farhud survivors and create the world's leading archive of Farhud testimony.

 

"If we don't tell our story, no one will do it for us.

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We need to share our story now."