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Friday August 10, 2007

‘Arab Schindler’ a beacon

by armin rosen
jta

Some see Khaled Abdelwahhab, who risked his life to shelter Jews while Tunisia was under Nazi occupation, as an “Arab Oskar Schindler.”

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, sees something more in Abdelwahhab’s story. Satloff calls the Tunisian farmer “a powerful symbol from a historical point of view.”

He believes Abdelwahhab’s tale of heroism, and other stories of Arab actions during the Holocaust Satloff compiled in his recent book “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands,” could “turn the discussion of the Holocaust on its head” in the Arab and Muslim world, where Holocaust denial is rampant.

The book explains that the Holocaust is part of both the Arab and Jewish experience, he said. He nominated Abdelwahhab, who hid 24 Jews on his family farm for months during the Nazi occupation, for the distinction of “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. Abdelwahhab would be the first Arab among nearly 22,000 “Righteous Gentiles.”

Spreading the word about Abdelwahhab’s actions could help breed the tolerance needed to heal rifts between the Arab and Jewish communities, Satloff said, adding that Abdelwahhab’s nonchalance about his actions was similar to that of other non-Jewish rescuers during the Holocaust.

“They have very humble motivations. I don’t see any difference here,” he said.

Abdelwahhab, who died 10 years ago, lived in a society with fewer distinctions separating people, Satloff said, which made his actions more “natural” for the era. Satloff hopes that for the Arab world, recapturing this neglected aspect of its history will mean accepting the basic premises of the Holocaust.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks provided the “trigger” for the work, prompting Satloff to begin examining the societies the attackers sprang from. The book “is my modest way of fighting the hatred of 9/11,” he said. “I talk about choices Arabs made,” he continued. “It’s an Arab story.”

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