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(JTA) — In 1941 Sarajevo, a Muslim girl hid her Jewish good friend from fascist roundups. Half a century later, that very same Muslim girl was trapped within the besieged capital through the 1992-1995 Bosnian Struggle — and her Jewish good friend made certain she obtained out.
These actual occasions impressed “Sevap/Mitzvah,” a brief movie directed by Sabina Vajrača that received the 2023 Humanitas Prize, amongst different awards, and has certified to be thought of for the 2024 Oscar for finest reside motion quick.
The movie has been proven the world over, together with on the Cleveland Worldwide Movie Pageant and the Joyce Discussion board Jewish Quick Movie Pageant in San Diego. Upcoming screenings embody the Centre Movie Pageant in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 1; the Ojai Movie Pageant in Ojai, California, on Nov. 5; and the Lake County Movie Pageant in Grayslake, Illinois, between Nov. 3-12.
The Arabic phrase “Sevap” and the Hebrew phrase “Mitzvah” translate to the identical which means: An excellent deed.
“I needed to inform a narrative about Jews and Muslims coexisting peacefully and fortunately, and serving to each other, which is the narrative that we don’t actually hear,” Vajrača instructed the Jewish Telegraphic Company. Vajrača herself escaped the Bosnian Struggle as an adolescent, arriving in america as a refugee.
Because the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Sarajevo was closely bombed, its synagogue looted and 400-year-old Torah scrolls burned. The Jewish Kabiljo household was amongst those that fled to the forests and returned to search out their residence destroyed.
A few Muslim buddies and neighbors, Mustafa and Zejneba Hardaga, supplied the Kabiljos shelter of their residence. On the threat of their very own execution, the Hardagas hid Josef Kabiljo, his spouse Rifka and their two kids from the Gestapo and the Ustaša — the fascist motion that dominated the areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout World Struggle II.
In keeping with their religion, the ladies within the Hardaga household lined their faces with a veil in entrance of males who weren’t their household. However to sign that the Kabiljos have been welcome, Mustafa Hardaga instructed Zejneba and her sister-in-law Bachriya that they might take away their veils earlier than Josef Kabiljo.
Josef later testified to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority: “By no means earlier than had an odd man stayed with them. They welcomed us with the phrases: ‘Josef, you’re our brother, and your kids are like our kids. Really feel at residence and no matter we personal is yours.’”
The Ustaša got down to purge its state of Serbs, Jews and Roma via labor and loss of life camps. By the tip of the warfare, they succeeded in murdering 12,000 of Bosnia’s 14,000 Jews. However the Kabiljo household survived, ultimately making their technique to Israel.
Filmmaker Sabina Vajrača was 14 through the Bosnian Struggle. (Joshua Sarlo)
Fifty years later, 76-year-old Zejneba Hardaga discovered herself on the heart of one other genocide in Sarajevo. (By that point, her husband had died.) Serb forces launched into a marketing campaign to rid Bosnia of non-Serbs, the vast majority of whom have been Bosnian Muslims, often known as Bosniaks. Sarajevo was blockaded from meals, water and energy between April 1992 and February 1996 — the longest siege in trendy historical past.
Hardaga sheltered in a basement along with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, subsisting for weeks at a time on soup manufactured from grass they picked close by. Exterior, Sarajevo was shelled each day and snipers focused individuals leaving their properties. Over 11,000 individuals have been killed through the siege.
In Jerusalem, Rifka Kabiljo and her household have been watching Bosnia’s devastation on the information. They contacted an Israeli journalist who was overlaying the warfare, asking him to verify that Hardaga was alive.
Upon studying she was nonetheless in Sarajevo, the Kabiljos appealed for assist from Yad Vashem, which had acknowledged Hardaga and her household as Righteous Among the many Nations in 1984.
Yad Vashem’s authority didn’t sway the president of Bosnia, so the Kabiljos took their case all the way in which to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.
In early 1994, the Hardagas joined 300 others in a convoy of six buses leaving Sarajevo — the final rescue of largely Jewish refugees organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Sarajevo’s Jewish neighborhood. The household was given a selection of locations, and Zejneba selected to hitch her good friend Rifka in Israel. She died there a yr later.
Vajrača, a Bosnian Muslim, began fascinated with tales of Jews and Muslims who rescued one another throughout a dialog along with her late grandmother — who admitted that she was haunted by her failure to avoid wasting a childhood finest good friend. One morning in 1941, when she was about 9 years outdated, she watched from a window as her Jewish good friend who lived next-door was rounded up along with her household. Vajrača’s grandmother tried to run exterior however her mother and father held her again, saying it was harmful exterior. The Jewish lady and her household died in a focus camp.
“She mentioned to me, ‘I remembered it as a result of 50 years later, they knocked on my door and got here for me,’” recounted Vajrača, whose grandmother survived the Bosnian Struggle. “‘They took me, and I believed, maybe if we had saved them 50 years in the past this wouldn’t have occurred.’”
Vajrača was 14 years outdated when her northern Bosnian city was overrun by Serb forces. Her household was shortly focused, as her father labored in humanitarian support for victims of the warfare. In retaliation, the Serbs threatened to take Vajrača to a focus camp, the place girls and women have been systematically raped. Her mother and father requested everybody they knew for assist getting her in a foreign country.
“Ultimately, the individuals who saved me have been two girls, each Christian — one Croatian and one Serb,” Vajrača instructed JTA. “They’re those who saved my life, even on the threat of their very own. So the story that I inform on this movie is private in that approach, that it occurred to me as properly.”
Zejneba Hardaga’s daughter, Sara Pecanac, nonetheless lives in Jerusalem. She transformed to Judaism and labored at Yad Vashem for a few years.
In a 2013 interview, Pecanac recalled how her mom requested to satisfy Rabin a number of months after their arrival. After a little bit of chatting, Hardaga mentioned she needed to supply Rabin some recommendation.
“The entire place went quiet,” mentioned Pecananc. “Who was this outdated girl to present recommendation to the prime minister of Israel? He mentioned ‘OK,’ and she or he mentioned, ‘Please, attempt to make peace within the Center East. Don’t let Jerusalem develop into Sarajevo.’”
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