Righteous Among the Nations: Muslims Who Saved Jews from Holocaust
ST. LOUIS (RNS) In 2003, Norman Gershman was looking for some of the righteous.
What he found astonished the investment banker-turned-photographer, and led him toward a project now on display in a St. Louis synagogue....
During the years of occupation, 10 times as many Jews streamed into Albania to escape persecution from Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Italy. Gershman says it was the only country in Europe where the Jewish population grew by the end of the war....
All of them were motivated by an Albanian code of honor called "besa," a concept that can be translated into "keeping the promise," Gershman says. The Albanian villagers were motivated to risk their lives by the simple concept of helping one's neighbor....
Ahmet Karamustafa, professor of history and religious studies at Washington University, said saving a life is a universally acknowledged Muslim value.
Protecting a life, Karamustafa said, "has always ranked at the very top of moral and legal categories articulated by legal and theological scholars in Islam."...
Read entire article at St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What he found astonished the investment banker-turned-photographer, and led him toward a project now on display in a St. Louis synagogue....
During the years of occupation, 10 times as many Jews streamed into Albania to escape persecution from Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Italy. Gershman says it was the only country in Europe where the Jewish population grew by the end of the war....
All of them were motivated by an Albanian code of honor called "besa," a concept that can be translated into "keeping the promise," Gershman says. The Albanian villagers were motivated to risk their lives by the simple concept of helping one's neighbor....
Ahmet Karamustafa, professor of history and religious studies at Washington University, said saving a life is a universally acknowledged Muslim value.
Protecting a life, Karamustafa said, "has always ranked at the very top of moral and legal categories articulated by legal and theological scholars in Islam."...