In the wake of the proposed Muslim Registry, many in the Jewish community have promised to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community. The Forward, a Jewish journal, declares “we know what it is to feel targeted” and presents three true stories “of Muslims who stood against fascism, race hatred and bigotry during the Holocaust, and saved the lives of Jewish people when others would not.”
Click and see a photo of Zejneba Hardaga walking with a Jewish woman, Rivka Kavillo, and her children down a street in Sarajevo in 1941. Notice how Ms. Hardaga discreetly covers Ms.Rivka’s yellow star with her headscarf. The Hardaga family protected and hid the Kavillos family throughout the war, and they all survived.
Ali Sheqer Pashkaj was the owner of a general store in Pukë, Albania where one day he learned that the Nazis were going to execute a Jewish man named Yeoshua Baruchowiç. The shop owner distracted the Nazis, getting them inebriated on free drink, so he could help Yeoshua escape into the forest. Mr. Pashkaj would go on to hide Yeoshua in his home until after the war was over.
Nuro Hoxha was a well known religious leader in Vlorë, Albania, and became part an anti-fascist movement that harbored Jews from the Nazis. During the war, Mr. Hoxha sheltered four Jewish families.
