It's True: Bosnian Muslims Rescued Jews from the

Holocaust
SARAJEVO, Sun. — Bosnia’s tiny Jewish community has thrown its weight behind Bosnian
Muslims in their bloody struggle for independence.

“In this land we live all together — the Muslims [Bosniaks], the Jew, the Croatian and the Serb.
We are friends and brothers and we have lived here for 500 years,” said Cahhi David, vice-
president of the local, Jewish-run Benevolent Society.

Sitting in the battered, rubble-strewn Jewish centre in the mediaeval part of Sarajevo, the old
man speaks an ancient form of Spanish brought by the Sephardic Jews expelled from Roman
Catholic Spain in 1492.

No one seems quite sure how many members of the community remain in the Bosnian capital
after five months of bloodshed but David said there were about 900 — some 300 families.

Most of the elderly and very young hand left, for Israel, western Europe and other towns in
what was Yugoslavia, including Split and Dubrovnik.

“We have a higher proportion of our people at the front and working in government than any of
the other communities,” David said. He had no precise figures but said about 10 percent were
involved in the war effort.

“Our people support the war [for independence of Bosnia], because the Muslims [Bosniaks] are
going through today what the Jews suffered under fascism in World War Two,” he said.

“There used to be 14,000 Jews in Sarajevo, but many went to the concentration camps.
Nowadays it’s the Muslims [Bosniaks] who are in Serb detention centres and suffering from
‘ethnic cleansing.’”

Survival of the community meant accepting inter-marriage and embracing the partners of such
marriages in the little synagogue, built by Ashkenazi Jews in 1902.

“It’s true that Muslims protected Jews in Yugoslavia during the German military occupation in
World War II,” said Alma Softic, a 31-year-old community leader.

She told reporters that her grandmother was a Jew, her grandfather a Muslim.

“My Muslim relatives rallied around to protect my grandmother and her relatives to prevent
them going to the camps,” she said.

Papo Predrag, 44, chief of security at the cultural centre and synagogue, said the Holocaust was
never far from his mind.
“On my father’s side alone, 56 relatives went to the death camps, dragged there by German and
Italian fascists. Nobody came back,” he said. “My father is a Jew, my mother a Muslim. So you
tell me, what am I and my brother? Bosnians. But to tell the truth, I’m an atheist. We have
many mixed marriages — among Jews, Orthodox Serbs, Catholics and Muslims.”

Sarajevo’s front line runs through the middle of an old Jewish cemetery, where Serb fighters
have taken cover behind the gravestones.

How many Jews have been killed in the civil war tearing the Balkans apart? David shrugs and
helps himself to another glass of plum brandy.

“We don’t know how many people are left in Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, in Sarajevo.”

Credits: Appeared in New Straits Times newspapers, 7 September 1992, page 22, “Jews Back
Muslims in Independence Struggle”, (Reuters).