The 1947 Aden pogrom was one of the most violent attacks on Mizrahi Jewish communities in the Middle East in the modern times, resulting in at least 82 Jews murdered and a widescale devastation of local Jewish community of Aden, bringing an end to its millennia long history.

Background

By mid 20th century Aden was populated by a community of several thousand Jews. In the 1930s there were rare, religiously motivated outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence and a relatively small riot in 1932. In 1933, anti-Jewish attacks occurred in Aden, with many Jews stoned and stabbed by Arab rioters. These outbreaks of violence were of minor significance, when compared to the terror unleashed three days after the November 1947 UN vote on the partition of Palestine, in which the lives of the Adani were irreparably shattered.

The pogrom

Following November 29, 1947 vote by the UN on partition of the British Mandate for Palestine, wide scale protests took place across the Arab countries and communities, with Aden being no exception. Shortly after their beginning, the protests in Aden erupted into unrestrained bloody violence against the Jews, triggered by the false accusation of Jews for murder of two local girls.

The pogrom, that erupted on December 2, 1947, was devastating - 82 Jews were murdered and 76 wounded; 106 out of the 170 existing Jewish shops in Aden were robbed bare and eight were partially emptied. Four synagogues were "burnt to the ground" and 220 Jewish houses were burned and looted or damaged. The Selim Girl's School in 1929 which was located next to King George V Jewish Boys School and was also gutted in the 1947 riots.

With no British troops in Aden at that particular time, the Jewish community felt some relief, when they heard that the Aden Protectorate Levies

Aden Protectorate Levies

The Aden Protectorate Levies were a militia force for local defense of the Aden Protectorate. The Levies were drawn from all parts of the Protectorate and were armed and officered by the British military...

 were to be bought in to protect them. But the Levies, being Arab Muslims

Arab Muslims

Arab Muslims are adherents of the religion of Islam who identify linguistically, culturally, or genealogically as Arabs. They greatly outnumber other ethnic groups in the Middle East. Muslims who are not Arabs are called mawali by Arab Muslims....

, were seen to turn a blind eye to the violence and themselves fired indiscriminately on the Jews, killing many.

Aftermath

Following the bloody riot, Adeni Jewish community almost entirely emptied, together with most of the Yemeni Jewish community. In response to an increasingly perilous situation, most of the Yemenite Jewish community had been secretly evacuated to Israel between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation Magic Carpet

Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)

Operation Magic Carpet is a widely-known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles , an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel. British and American transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden, in a secret operation that was...

.

The final destruction of the Adeni Jewish community took place in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War and after Aden had received independence from the British (Aden had been ceded to the British since 1839). Murder, looting, new destruction to the synagogues - remaining Jews were finally evacuated with the help of the British, when they discovered the Arabs were planning to massacre of the remaining Jewish community. The Jewry of Aden became virtually "the community that was."