A Film Depicting How Paris Mosque Sheltered & helped Jews escape the Nazis by giving them Muslim IDs

[KhanHaripur]

http://m.voanews.com/a/146563.html

A scene from "Les Hommes Libres"

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=625080580870644

A newly released film in France depicts for the first time how the Paris Mosque saved Jews and Muslim resistance fighters during World War II.
Troves of books, movies and articles have been released over the years in France describing almost every facet of World War II and the Nazi occupation here. But one historical nugget has been largely overlooked - the role played by Muslims during that dark period of French history.
A new movie aims to right the record. Released two weeks ago in cinemas across the country, "Les Homme Libres" - "Free Men" in English - describes how the former rector of the Paris Mosque, Si Kaddour Ben Gabrit, offered shelter and Muslim identity to Jews and resistance fighters. Just how many Jews is a matter of dispute. Some say very few. What is certain, is that gesture saved them from deportation and death.
The current rector of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, is no stranger to this story.
Boubakeur says he has tried for years to focus public attention to Ben Gabrit's acts through public conferences and the media. But he says he has had a hard time digging into the past. Many first-hand witnesses have died. Documents remain buried in government offices.
There have been a handful of accounts of the role played by the Paris mosque and Muslims in wartime France. But this is the first time it has been depicted in a movie.
Benjamin Stora, a North Africa expert who was a consultant for the film, say it is a first in other ways.
"Through the movie, French have learned that nearly 100,000 North Africans lived in France in the 1930s and '40s," Stora says. "Most were from Algeria. Some collaborated with the Nazis, but others joined the French resistance. Many French are only aware of the massive immigration of North African workers here after the war."
Stora says one reason that French know so little about the Muslim community of that era is that many later became resistance fighters during Algeria's war of liberation from France. Their World War II past was buried.
"Sephardic, or North African Jews, also lived in Paris during Nazi occupation. Like their Muslim counterparts, they spoke Arabic," said Stora. "The two communities shared the same food and love of Andalusian music."
Today, the relationship between French Jews and Muslims has deteriorated - reflecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Paris Mosque rector Boubakeur is among a number of religious leaders trying to improve ties between the two communities.
Boubakeur believes the movie might improve relations between Muslims and Jews here - changing the way each looks at the other. And for French citizens in general, it highlights a time when Muslims here reached out a hand to help those in great danger.

 

[KhanHaripur]

Re: Film Depicts How Paris Mosque Sheltered/helped Jews escape the Nazis by giving them Muslim IDs

[h=2]That time the Paris Mosque helped Jews escape the Nazis by giving them Muslim IDs[/h] [h=3]In "Paris" "shock me" on May 17, 2013 at 12:30 pm[/h]
Here’s one they left out of the history textbooks. A recent French film, Free Men, brought to light the remarkable true history of how Muslims gave sanctuary to French Jews in Nazi-occupied Paris during Second World War. An untold “Oscar Schindler” story, the film is inspired by actual events and in this case, our ‘Schindler’ is Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris until 1954. Image (c) Alice Heartherb Underneath the fortress of mosaics and tranquil gardens occupying an entire city block in the Latin Quarter, it is revealed the mosque’s underground caverns once served as a refuge for resistance fighters and French Jews, where they could be provided with certificates of Muslim identity. Meanwhile upstairs, Benghabrit, a wise Algerian-born religious and political leader, was giving tours of the mosque to Nazi officers and their wives, unaware of what was transpiring right under their feet. Watch the trailer for Free Men below:
A North African Jewish man named Albert Assouline, who had escaped from a German prison camp, wrote about his experience hiding in the mosque: “No fewer than 1,732 resistance fighters found refuge in its underground caverns. These included Muslim escapees but also Christians and Jews. The latter were by far the most numerous.” Giving sanctuary for Jews was largely impulsive and did not result in an organised movement by the mosque, which is perhaps why historical records remain so bleary. Some claim thousands of Jews were saved, others say it was in the dozens. In 2006, the current rector of the Paris Grand Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, was interviewed by Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In Mr. Saltoff’s book, Among the Righteous, Boubakeur confirms that ’up to 100 Jews’ were likely given Muslim identity papers by the mosque and provides Saltoff with a copy of a typewritten 1940 Foreign Ministry document found in the French Archives, affirming the Nazi’s suspicion of mosque personnel providing false Muslim identities to Jews. Veteran French actor Michael Lonsdale plays Benghabrit (c) Pyramide Productions The most notable case of the mosque refuge was Simon Hilali, a Sephardic Jew who survived the Holocaust by pretending to be an Arab named Salim with the assistance of Benghrabit and later went on to become the most popular Arab-language singer of the time. According to Hilali’s obituary, Germans were so suspicious of the Jewish musician that Benghabrit had the name of Hilali’s made-up Muslim grandfather carved on a headstone in a Parisian Muslim cemetery. I missed the film in the cinemas when it came out last year because I never heard about it’s release, but what an important message to miss out on. The film’s director is lobbying for it to be shown in schools. “It pays homage to the people of our history who have been invisible,” he told the New York Times. “It shows another reality, that Muslims and Jews existed in peace. We have to remember that — with pride.”

 

[Mehrushka]

Re: Film Depicts How Paris Mosque Sheltered/helped Jews escape the Nazis by giving them Muslim IDs

There was a reason why hitler didnt kill all......now we know why :biggthumpup: