Arab and Muslim rescue efforts during the Holocaust
A number of
No occupied country in Africa or Europe was free of collaboration with the genocide campaign against the Jews, but this was often more common in European countries than Arab ones. The offer made to Algerians by colonial French officials to take over confiscated Jewish property found many French settlers ready to profit from the scheme, but no Arab participated and, in the capital, Algiers itself, Muslim clerics openly declared their opposition to the idea.[2] While some Arabs collaborated with the Axis powers by working as guards in labour camps[citation needed], others risked their own lives to attempt to save Jews from persecution and genocide.
Arab rescue efforts were not limited to the Middle East–
Tehran children
Despite the Iranian people suffering from the 1942-1943 famine, Iran became a place of refuge for 116,000 Polish refugees, of whom, around 5,000 were Polish Jews.[5][6] Iranians openly received them, supplying them with provisions. Young survivors who arrived in Iran became known as the 'Tehran Children'.[7][8][9][10] Polish schools, cultural and educational organizations, shops, bakeries, businesses, and press were established to make the Poles feel more at home.[11][12] The Iranian city Isfahan was briefly called "the City of Polish Children" because of the thousands of Polish orphans who settled there.[13]
One of the refugees, Adam Szymel, recalling the moment he entered Iran, said:
Well, on the camp, there was on that ship there was just two of us. My mother stayed behind with my grandmother and two sisters. They left about two weeks later. We arrived in at that time was Persia, now it’s Iran. Port of Pahlavi ... Finally, we were free. We could really say we were free... It’s like when the weight is dropped off your shoulders. That you could speak freely without, you know, looking if someone is watching you. That you’re your own master, you’re free. I was 14 years old.[14][15]
In North Africa
Si Ali Sakkat
During his career, Si Ali Sakkat held positions of a
Khaled Abdul-Wahab
Abdul-Wahab was a son of a well-known Tunisian historian. He was 32 years old when the Germans occupied Tunisia. He was an interlocutor between the Nazis and the population of the coastal town of Mahdia. When he overheard German officers planning to rape a local Jewish woman, Odette Boukhris, he hid the woman and her family, along with about two dozen more Jewish families, at his farm outside of town. The families stayed there for four months, until the occupation ended. Abdul-Wahab is sometimes called the Arab Oskar Schindler.[17] In 2009 two trees were dedicated to honor his bravery. One tree was planted in Adas Israel Garden of the Righteous in Washington, D.C., the other was planted in the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide. His daughter Faiza attended the ceremony in Milan.[18]
Shaykh Taieb el-Okbi
Taieb el-Okbi was a member of
Moncef Bey
Tunisia was a de-facto French colony under Moncef Bey during the War. The Nazis established labor camps in Tunisia, killing over 2,500 Tunisian Jews.[23] Just eight days after ascending the throne, he awarded the highest royal distinction to about twenty prominent Tunisian Jews. Moncef later went on to say that Tunisian Jews are "his children" like Tunisian Muslims.[24][25] His prime minister, Mohamed Chenik, regularly warned Jewish leaders of German plans. He helped Jews avoid arrest, intervened to prevent deportations, and even hid individual Jews.[26] Because all legislation needed his signature, Moncef Bey stalled anti-semitic laws.[27][28] According to Mathilda Guez, a Tunisian Jew who later became an Israeli politician, Moncef Bey gathered all the senior officials of the realm at the palace and gave them this warning:[29]
The Jews are having a hard time but they are under our patronage and we are responsible for their lives. If I find out that an Arab informer caused even one hair of a Jew to fall, this Arab will pay with his life.
Moncef Bey was later ousted from power, with the French claiming that he was a Nazi collaborator. General Alphonse Juin doubted this charge and tried to prevent his ouster.[30] The real reason he was removed was because he formed the first solely Tunisian government, causing an outcry by French settlers.[31]
Mohammed V
Nevertheless, Mohammed is highly esteemed by
Muslim rescue efforts in Europe
Albania, a predominantly Muslim country, saved almost all of its resident Jewish population.[38][39][40] The survival rate in the then-Yugoslavian province of Kosovo was 60%, making it one of the areas with the highest Jewish survival rate in Europe.[41]
Djaafar Khemdoudi
Djaafar Khemdoudi was a member of the French resistance during World War II. During his time in France, he forged health certificates and issued false documents, helping to save many individuals from the Compulsory Work Service (Service du Travail Obligatoire or STO) and also Jewish children from the cities of Saint-Fons and Vénissieux. After being captured by the Germans, Khemdoudi was deported to the concentration camp of Neuengamme, to the concentration camp of Malchow and then to Ravensbrück. He survived the camps, and, after the war, returned to France, where he lived the rest of his life. Khemdoudi is considered to have been part of the "indigenous resistance"—a term used for Resistance members from North Africa. Like many such persons, Khemdoudi's actions during the war received very little attention after his death.[42]
Refik Veseli
Most of the 2,000 Jews of Albania were sheltered by the mostly Muslim population.[43] Refik Veseli, a 17-year-old Muslim boy, took in the family of Mosa and Gabriela Mandil, including their five-year-old son Gavra and his sister Irena, then refugees from Belgrade but originally from Novi Sad, for whom he had been working as an apprentice in their Tirana photographic shop. When the Germans took over from the Italians, he took them, and another Jewish family on a long night journey to his family village at Kruja, where they were protected by his parents until the war's end, some 9 months later, even against Enver Hoxha's partisans. His example inspired his whole village to risk their lives in order to protect Jews.[44] On receiving Gavra Mandil's request for them to be recognized as righteous, the authorities of Yad Vashem inscribed both Refka and Drita Veseli in 1988 among the Righteous. The story became better known after Albania's surviving Jewish community was allowed to perform aliyah in the 1990s.[45]
Many survivors told how their Albanian hosts vied for the privilege of offering sanctuary, on the grounds that it was an Islamic ethical obligation.[46] Since that date, a further 50 Albanians have been registered among the ranks of the Righteous, such as Arslan Rezniqi.[47][48][49][50]
Selahattin Ülkümen
In one case, survivor Albert Franko was on a transport to Auschwitz. Whilst still in Greek territory, he was taken off the train thanks to the intervention of Ulkumen, who was informed that Franko’s wife was a Turkish citizen. Another survivor, Matilda Toriel relates that she was a Turkish citizen living in Rhodes and married to an Italian citizen. On July 18, 1944, all the Jews were told to appear at Gestapo headquarters the following day. As she prepared to enter the building, Ülkümen approached her and told her not to go in. It was the first time she had ever met him. He told her to wait until he had managed to release her husband. As her husband later told her, Ülkümen requested that the Germans release the Turkish citizens and their families, who numbered only 15 at the time. However, Ülkümen added another 25-30 people to the list whom he knew had allowed their citizenship to lapse. The Gestapo, suspecting him, demanded to see their papers, which they did not have. Ulkumen however returned to the Gestapo building, insisting that according to Turkish law, spouses of Turkish citizens were considered to be citizens themselves, and demanded their release. Matilda later discovered that no such law existed, that Ülkümen had made it up to save them. In the end, all those on Ülkümen’s list were released.[54]
The Grand Mosque of Paris
The Grand Mosque of Paris is one the largest and the oldest mosques in France.[55] During the German occupation of France, the mosque became a place of shelter for members of the French Resistance and Jews escaping Nazi persecution.[56] Algerian members of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP; Partisan Snipers) sheltered and protected British parachutists who landed in France.[57][58] Under the oversight of the first rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, French Jews were given papers declaring them Muslims as protection, including the famous Algerian-Jewish singer Salim Halali.[59][60]
Nurija Pozderac
Nurija Pozderac was a Bosnian politician and resistance leader during World War Two. He was the Vice President of the Executive Board of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia and a member of the Yugoslav Muslim Organization. After Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Nazis created the 'Independent State of Croatia', a fascist puppet state ruled by the Ustaše. Pozderac was offered a position in the government, but refused. Pozderac became a partisan, joining in the fight against fascists.[61][62] Though he was killed in 1943 during Case Black, he was still able to personally save and shelter thousands of individuals and families from persecution.[63][64] He was later honored as a 'Righteous Among the Nations'.
Mohammed Helmy
Mohammed Helmy was an Egyptian doctor who moved to Berlin in the 1920s. Because he was Arab, he was fired from his hospital in 1938 and barred from practicing medicine. He was also forbidden to marry his German fiancée, Emmi Ernst.[65] He was interned by the German government until the Egyptian government secured his release in 1941.
After his release, Helmy was conscripted as a doctor in Charlottenburg. While there, he wrote sick notes for foreign workers and Germans to help them avoid conscription.[65] During the deportations of Berlin’s Jews, Anna Boros was sheltered by Helmy, despite being himself targeted by the Nazi regime until the end of the war. When he was under police investigation, Helmy arranged for Boros to hide elsewhere, doing everything in his power to protect her.[66] He obtained a certificate attesting to Boros’ conversion to Islam and a marriage certificate that she was married to an Egyptian man in a ceremony held in Helmy’s home.[67] Helmy also provided assistance to Boros’ mother, Julianna; her stepfather, Georg Wehr; and her grandmother, Cecilie Rudnik. He arranged for Rudnik to be hidden in the home of a German friend, Frieda Szturmann.[68] He was later recognized by Vad Vashem for his actions in 2013.[69]
Abdol Hossein Sardari
Abdol Hossein Sardari was an Iranian diploment based in Paris during the Holocaust. When he ran the Iranian consular office in Paris in 1942, he successfully argued that Iranian Jews were 'Aryans', saving the not only Iranian Jewish community in France at the time but also non-Iranian Jews whom Sardari wrote false Iranian passports for.[70][71] Sardari ultimately saved 2,000 to 3,000 Jewish lives. Passports were issued for entire families and included French or non-Iranian partners.[72] He was later dubbed the "Iranian Schindler".[73][74][75]
See also
References
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- ^ Paul Harris, 'Israel called on to honour the 'Arab Schindler', at The Guardian, 11 April 2010.
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- ^ "Tehran Children". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
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- ^ Sarner, Harvey (1997) p. 48
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Further reading
Güçlü, Yücel (2023). Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish Righteous among the Nations. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Dekel, Mikhal (2019). Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey. W. W. Norton & Company.
Kerem, Yitzchak (2014). "Rescue of Sephardic Jews by Muslims in the Holocaust". Journal of Sephardic Studies. 2 (40): 39–76 – via academia.edu.
Mokhtari, Fariborz (2012). In the Lion's Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and His Homeland in the Second World War. The History Press.
Cherif, Fayçal (2011). "Jewish-Muslim Relations in Tunisia during World War II: Propaganda, Stereotypes, and Attitudes, 1939–1943". In Gottreich, Emily Benichou; Schroeter, Daniel J. (eds.). Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Indiana University Press. pp. 305–320.
Ruelle, Karen Gray; Desaix, Deborah Durland (2010). The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust. Holiday House.
Damandan, Parisa (2010). The Children Of Esfahan - Polish Refugees in Iran: Abolqasem Jala. Nazar.
Gershman, Norman H (2008). Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews WW II (1st ed.). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Satloff, Robert (2006). Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab Lands. Public Affairs.
Sarner, Harvey (1997). Rescue in Albania : One Hundred Percent of Jews in Albania Rescued from Holocaust. Brunswick Press.