Wartime Saving of The Jews
Abdul-Wahab, the son of an aristocratic family, was 31 when German troops occupied Tunisia in November 1942. Tunisia was then home to approximately 100,000 Jews. Under the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies, they were forced to wear yellow badges and were subject to fines and having their property confiscated. More than 5,000 Tunisian Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died. Another 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps - which might have been the fate of Jews in Tunisia itself, had Nazi rule lasted longer.
Abdul-Wahab, an interlocutor between the Nazis and the population of the coastal town of Mahdia, heard that German officers were planning to rape a local Jewish woman, Odette Boukhris; instead, he hid her, her family, and several other Jewish families, about two dozen in all, at his farm outside town for four months, until the occupation ended.
Read more about this topic: Khaled Abdul-Wahab
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