Muslim Savior of Holocaust Jews
CAIRO – Delving into untold stories of the Holocaust, a new film is shedding the light on heroism of Muslims who risked their lives to rescue Jews from the Nazi brutality.
“This film is an event,” Benjamin Stora, France’s pre-eminent historian on North Africa, told The New York Times.
“Much has been written about Muslim collaboration with the Nazis. But it has not been widely known that Muslims helped Jews.”
The film, “Free Man”, traces the heroism of the founder of the Grand Mosque of Paris in saving Jews from the Nazis.
It tells the story of Algerian-born Kaddour Benghabrit who rescued Jews in France from the Nazi brutality.
Benghabrit provided shelter and Muslim identification documents to scores of Jews to help them escape arrest by Nazi troops.
He also used the Grand Mosque of Paris to shelter more than 100 Jews from persecution.
Despite hiding Jews inside, Benghabrit used to give mosque tours to German officers and their wives to deceive them.
The movie premiered this week in France after four years of travel and research. It is also to be released in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium.
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One account came from Albert Assouline, a North African Jew who escaped from a German prison camp.
Assouline said that more than 1,700 resistance fighters, including Jews, found refuge in the mosque’s underground caverns, and that the imam provided many Jews with certificates of Muslim identity.
The film comes almost five years after Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, revealed in his 2006 book, “Among the Righteous,” stories of Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
The book included a chapter on the Grand Mosque of Paris.
..Another children’s book “The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust,” published in 2007, also highlighted the mosque’s role.
Ferroukhi, the director, urges the France government to take the film about the Muslim heroism to schools.
“It pays homage to the people of our history who have been invisible,” he said.
“It shows another reality, that Muslims and Jews existed in peace. We have to remember that — with pride.”
http://www.onislam.net/english/news/3342/454207.html
Cheers,
Shafique