A Berlin elementary school has been renamed after a Muslim man who saved a Jewish family during the Nazi’s rule and Second World War (WII), hosting them in his house for years during the Holocaust.
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“They may not have been educated on the heritage of Goethe and Schiller, but they attached the greatest importance to human life, in a most natural and understandable way,” the Jewish family wrote about the Muslim hero and his family, Haartz reported on Sunday, October 26.
At the age of 17, the Albanian Muslim photographer Refik Veseli has guided the Yugoslavian Jewish Moshe Mandil and his family through Albania’s mountains and into his parent’s home, where they stayed until 1944.
The Yugoslavian Jewish family that owned a photography studio in the former Soviet Union country was detained after trying to flee during the Nazi invasion in 1941.
Escaping their detention to Albania, the Jewish family faced the German invasion once again where they were hosted by Veseli and his family, surviving the Nazi bombings on the Albanian village.
Over the past decades, the two families have maintained close ties, "with Veseli naming his son Ron after Moshe’s grandson".
Paying back to the generous Muslim family, Moshe’s son Gavra wrote to Yad Vashem, Israel-based Holocaust research center, about Veseli’s family and how they saved their lives.
Meanwhile, the Muslim hero was granted the membership of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” a title awarded by Yad Vashem.
Moreover, the Mandils were informed that a Berlin elementary school has been named after the Muslim man, following a vote by its students, parents and teachers.
Veseli is not the first Muslim to receive honors for helping Jews during World War II.
Israel has already honored 63 Albanians as “Righteous Among the Nations".
Before World War II, there were only 200 Jews in Muslim-majority Albania, which had a total population of 800,000.
After the war, there were many more Jews after Jewish refugees from some half dozen European countries fled the Nazi persecution to seek shelter in Albania, according to Israeli officials.
Yet, some Muslims choose to return their “Righteous Among the Nations” medal in a sign of protesting the Israeli operations in Gaza.
“It is with great sorrow that I am herewith returning the medal I received as an honor and a token of appreciation from the State of Israel for the efforts and risks taken by my mother and her family in saving the life of a Jewish boy during the German occupation," a 91-year-old Dutch man Henk Zanoli said.
