Citing their own bitter experiences in a country where Jews were tortured and degraded, four Iraqi Jews now living in San Diego express fear for the health and safety of Americans taken prisoners in the current war in Iraq.

They also told of their concern that the United States, as an occupying force in Iraq, will become as much the focus of Arab resentment and anger as Israel is.

Souada Spivack, whose own brother suffered Iraqi imprisonment and torture, told Heritage emotionally: "I pray for the sake of the Americans, that they should come back to their families, to the people who love them. .. I want them to live and I want their loved ones to enjoy them."

Seeing images of the American POWs on television made her  shudder: "I said, 'Please, God, watch over their safety and give them the strength to endure what is coming. ... Give them the strength to survive, the physique to live through it, and the strength in the heart that when they come out of there, they don¹t become like animals."

Spivack fled Iraq over the Iranian border in 1970, nearly two decades after some 100,000 Iraqi Jewish citizens were "permitted" to leave all their belongings behind and emigrate en masse to Israel.

Amnon Dallal, Lea Mor and Shlomo Levy — today San Diego residents— all were among that earlier wave of Jews who gave up Iraqi material comforts in 1951 rather than remain the target of oppressive laws and state-sponsored violence.

As a youth, Dallal was a member of the secret Jewish self-defense Shura forces trained by Haganah operatives from Israel. He recalled that his uncle, Sasson Dallal, was hanged in a public square and his body left on display after being arrested for activities opposing the Iraqi government.

Although Iraqi leaders have changed over the years, Dallal said the widespread use of torture against opponents has continued unabated since the time his family members and friends suffered its effects.

"They did every. ...brutal thing that you can imagine that can be done to the human being,² Dallal said. It was not uncommon for people taken prisoners to be suspended from a ceiling by their thumbs, and left there without food or water for hours. During this time, he said, prisoners would be whipped continuously.

Shlomo Levy and Lea Mor, nephew and aunt from a large family, were respectively 7 and 9 years old when their families emigrated to Israel in 1951. They still remember the atmosphere of fear in which Jewish children lived amid bullying Arab neighbor children.

"We were afraid of the Arabs," Mor said. She remembered being blocked from going to her home by Arab boys who would threaten her until her uncle arrived.

Levy said when he was in school, the students would all sit on steps, and Arab boys on the step above him would kick him in the back. "You could not kick them back, because if you did, you were in trouble," Mor interjected. "You had to just ignore them and go home."

Spivack's family had intended to leave Iraq with the others in 1951, when her mother was pregnant with her. However, her father, Zaki Jabbaway, received word from relatives in Israel that all the Iraqi immigrants were being lodged in tents. Worried that his pregnant wife might
not be able to withstand such conditions, he waved aside her entreaties that they go anyway, and decided to remain in Iraq. It was a fateful decision for the family, which would increase to two boys and two girls.

Before her marriage, Spivack was known as Souada Jabbaway, a name that had been Arabized from Souada Shaul.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated the armies of its neighbors, anti-Jewish violence increased in Iraq. During one such outbreak, Spivack's brother Shmuel was arrested.
For nearly eight months, no one in the family knew where Shmuel was, or even if he were dead or alive.

From their home in Basra, they traveled to Baghdad, becoming sickened by the brutality in a public square where the bodies of executed Jews were being beaten with sticks by Arab passersby. Spivack remembers the horror of looking up at the faces of the dead Jews hanging in the square to see if any of them were her brother. Spivack was a teenager at the time.

Arriving at a central prison, their mother "begged and kissed the feet of people and beseeched the people, 'let me know if my son is alive; let me see him.' As Spivack's mother, Marcelle, made inquiries within, an official took pity on the teenage girl as she sat with her baby brother, Shaul, in
the sun outside the prison. He told her that there were some Jews being kept in solitary confinement. He suggested they return in three days, and "we kept coming for a week, and finally they led us to my brother...

"I cannot describe to you the condition!  The cell was maybe 3x3.. ... There was defecation, urine, rats and dung beetles everywhere; he had ticks walking all over him. His body was covered with cuts, and he had been given nothing except bread and water. Needless to say, my mom was overcome. She said to me, 'Go out and protect the baby!'"

The older brother, who today has a doctorate from MIT in nuclear physics, described to his mother how his captors had tortured him, burned his body, cut him on the back, pierced his eardrums, and broke his teeth— all in an effort to get him to confess falsely to plotting to blow up bridges and buildings.

Spivack remembers the hatred in the eyes of Arabs who passed her while she was waiting outside the prison building with her little brother. "You Jew!" they spat. "You bastard, you Jew!"

Three years later, the family escaped from Iraq with the help of Kurds who hid them in a hut in the northern part of the country, then led them to the Iranian border. One Kurd, who had occupied a position of influence in the government, made secret arrangements for their escape because he appreciated the fact that the Jabbaway family had helped tutor his son in various school subjects. Spivack today follows in that tradition, earning money as a tutor in math and physics.

After her family crossed into Iran, they were surrounded by armed border guards. Tensions between Iran and Iraq historically were high, and the guards accused the family of being spies. When they explained that they were Jews seeking to go to Israel, the Jabbaways were not immediately believed.

Most Jews, after all, had left Iraq 20 years before. But a man who spoke some Hebrew was summoned, and Spivack's father — who sometimes led his congregation in prayer as a cantorial soloist — recited enough Jewish prayers to satisfy the skeptical man. In that time of the Shah of Iran, there was cooperation between Israel and Iran.

Eventually, they reached Iran's capital city, Teheran, and from there they were flown to Israel. "Aug. 27, 1970, was the day that I arrived at the Lod airport,"Spivack recalled. "I will always remember. I got off and the first thing I did was I kissed the ground, and God rewarded me. My baby daughter, Tali, who today is 19 years old, was born on an Aug. 27."

In some ways, the Jabbaway family's trip to Israel paralleled Amnon Dallal's experiences. Having been in the Jewish self-defense group, Dallal grew up secreting weapons and documents under the tiles of his floor and explosives in the garden of his parents' house. "They are still there," he chuckled during an interview with Heritage.

Money to bribe prison guards was hidden inside hollowed-out watermelons and smuggled to prisoners. With other teens from his neighborhood, Dallal went to neighborhoods where they were not known to protect Jewish residents against Arab youth gangs. Meanwhile, Jewish youths from other neighborhoods protected his.

One of the advantages of such a network was that it provided an early warning system to members sought by the Iraqi authorities. When Dallal received a note that he was about to be arrested, he left his parents' home in a truck, drove to a pre-designated meeting place, and picked up three-dozen other youths. Then he drove to the Iranian border and set out by
foot through the mountains. They were quite grateful when they were arrested by the Iranian authorities.

As a member of the Shura, Dallal had been given the code name Amnon, the only name by which his colleagues knew him— a precaution lest someone be captured and tortured. After his escape from Iraq and later reunification with his parents in Israel, he adopted the first name Amnon in place of his given name, Ezra.

For all four refugees, life in Israel was a world far from that of life in Iraq. Whereas once they had been financially well off, now they were virtually penniless, having been permitted to carry only two suitcases of belongings with them. And those suitcases were searched for money and other
valuables.

"They took our houses, businesses, everything, and they told you only the last minute before you left," Mor remembered. After the family arrived in Israel, it lived in tents for years.

Levy remembered that one of the few keepsakes his family brought with them was a photograph that had been taken of him as a younger child. Worn and crumpled from age, it is still an important keepsake. Dallal similarly retains a family photograph from Iraq days.

When the Jabbaway family escaped, necessity forced them to travel light. Spivack's mother secreted into the clothing of the youngest child a mezuzah that had been in the family for perhaps 300 years. It had served as a family talisman, passed from generation to generation to women facing difficult pregnancies. Today, Spivack cherishes that mezuzah and lends it to her four
children when they feel they are facing tough circumstances.

As immigrants in the United States, these Iraqi Jewish families have fared well. Dallal had a career setting up computers in hospital laboratories, and nearly 15 years ago he became the recipient of a heart transplant. His wife, Dalya, who left Iraq as a child, teaches Israeli and other dances through a group called Dancing Unlimited.

Levy, who met his American wife, Taube, in New York City, decided to move to San Diego because this city reminded him of Haifa. He is a longtime employee of Radio Shack. 

Spivack met her husband, Bruce, while both were studying at the Technion in Israel. Today, their oldest son is a doctor; their younger son is studying to be a doctor, while their oldest daughter is an attorney, and their youngest daughter is a college student planning to become a doctor.