First Arab Nominated for Holocaust Honor

Tunisian man is first Arab to be nominated for holocaust honor for risking his life to save Tunisian Jews from Nazi persecution.

At the height of World War II, Khaled Abdelwahhab hid a group of Jews on his farm in a small Tunisian town, saving them from the Nazi troops occupying the North African nation.

Now, Abdelwahhab has become the first Arab nominated for recognition as ”Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.

[…]

… Abdelwahhab, the son of an aristocratic family was 32 when German troops arrived in Tunisia in November 1942.

[…]

Abdelwahhab served as an interlocutor between the population of the coastal town of Mahdia and German forces…

When he heard that German officers were planning to rape Odette Boukris, a local Jewish woman, he gathered her family and several other Jewish families in Mahdia — around two dozen people — and took them to his farm outside town. He hid them for four months, until the occupation ended.

[…]

Abdelwahhab still has to be approved by the Yad Vashem commission that grants the honor. Since the war, Yad Vashem has conferred the status on 21,700 people, including some 60 Muslims from the Balkans. But no Arab had ever been nominated.

[Source: NY Times]

[Thanks to Jimbo for the link]

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Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

3 thoughts on “First Arab Nominated for Holocaust Honor”

  2. Among my favorites of all those anointed by this recognition was the German Army officer, a captain, in charge of guarding a bridge between a large Polish town where the SS were bivouacked and the Jewish village that was their target. Morning and the SS came roaring across the bridge, but were stopped by the captain, his sergeant and a bevy of light machine guns. The captain asked them their mission. The SS officer, a lieutenant, said they were going to round up the Jews and ship ’em out to You-Know-Where. Replied the captain, “Where’s your warrant?” Silence. “You don’t have a warrant, lieutenant? Then come back when you have one. Now get these vehicles off my bridge!”

    Of course there was never a warrant, but when the SS came again–this time with a major–many of the Jewish villagers had left for parts unknown. (After the war, the captain, an army reservist, returned to his occupation as lawyer and was reportedly shunned as a disloyal German by more than a few people.)

  3. I think it’s important to enhance on the people or organizations who helped saving jews during 1939-1945 period,…but not too much!It has not to be perceived as allegiance to jews or a strong need to be recognized by them, but to proove there always had been right and brave people all over the world to defend justice to fight-in different ways-injustice and oppression. On the other hand,nowadays the holaucost is taking place every day in the occupied territories, to where many of these oppressed jews headed and settled, perpetrating oppression exiling murder emprisonig torturing…History and humanity will never forgive them….

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