France’s Iraq Embassy in a Seized Jewish House

A Jewish family built a grand home in Baghdad, Iraq in 1937.France rented it.Today, it still occupies that same home as its embassy.But not by paying the family that built it.By paying the Iraqi government that seized it.In this episode, Avi Kaner tells the story of Beit Lawee, and the much larger story it represents:Who the Lawee family wereJewish life in Iraq before its collapseThe Farhud pogrom of 1941The mass exodus of Iraqi JewsThe confiscation of Jewish property after 1967And why, decades later, none of it has been restoredThis is not just one house.It’s an entire lost world.