Tag: tunisia arab holocaust honor nomination

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]