.Heroic Tale of Holocaust, With a Twist

[rug]

In “Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”), a new wartime French film based on true stories, Tahar Rahim, seated, is a black-market operator and Michael Lonsdale portrays the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris.

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: October 3, 2011

PARIS — The stories of the Holocaust have been documented, distorted, clarified and filtered through memory. Yet new stories keep coming, occasionally altering the grand, incomplete mosaic of Holocaust history.

One of them, dramatized in a French film released here last week, focuses on an unlikely savior of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France: the rector of a Paris mosque.

Muslims, it seems, rescued Jews from the Nazis.

“Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”) is a tale of courage not found in French textbooks. According to the story, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, provided refuge and certificates of Muslim identity to a small number of Jews to allow them to evade arrest and deportation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/movies/how-a-paris-mosque-sheltered-jews-in-the-holocaust.html?_r=1&ref=religionandbelief

[Behind the Aegis]

1. It really isn't much of a "twist."

There are acts of kindness surrounding the Holocaust from all over, and the Muslims and Arabs are no exception! There are tales from Algeria of a sheik (?) who protected his employees by hiding them on his farm, as well as helping others escape (to the south, I beleive).

Noor Anayat Khan: The princess who became a spy

Members of the congregation, Greek consular officials and Lower East neighbors will gather at 1 p.m. on Sun. April 4 at the newly restored synagogue at 280 Broome St. for the opening of “Out of the Ashes,” honoring the lost community, its survivors and descendants and the Righteous Among Nations — Christians and Muslims — who sheltered survivors from the Holocaust.

--snip---

“About 1,000 escaped,” said Ikonomopoulos. “Some were hidden by Greek families in Athens and some who fled across the border to Albania were helped by Muslim families.”

Descendents of Greek Jews honor Holocaust victims

The Holocaust's Arab Heroes

Muslim Family Who Hid 26 Jews in Albania from the Nazis Honored by ADL

Yad Vashem Honors Albanian Muslims Among Righteous Gentiles

I would be interested in seeing this film.

[rug]

4. Good links.

I'd like to see this movie too. I hope it has subtitles. :)

[Boojatta]

2. "certificates of Muslim identity"

Weren't there Austrians who were members in good standing of mainstream Christian churches, but who were classified by government authorities as being racially Jewish, and who were on that basis transported to Poland for killing?

[The Magistrate]

5. Quite Likely,Sir

The political Anti-Semitism of Austria-Hungary, typified by Mayor Luger of Vienna before the Great War, recognized and accepted conversion to Christianity as erasing the 'foreigness' of a Jew, and there were a number of conversions that were, when the anschluss occurred, still quite recent.

Nazi doctrine, on the other hand, held that 'the taint is in the blood', and treated Jewish identity as a matter of inheritance and ancestry, not present belief. Conversion made no difference at all: persons born of a Jew were Jews, and that was that.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Thanks for posting this!

The brave people who risked their lives to rescue Jews from the Nazis should always be remembered. And Muslims were indeed among them.