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Source | British Things (ID: hereinuk)
Lead:
Two brutal wars, two tragic massacres, but two families of different faiths and different nationalities were closely linked.
"You can't decide how rich you are in the future, and you can't decide how smart and successful you are in the future, but you can decide how good you are in the future."
In Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in 1993, a Muslim old lady Hardaga with her daughter Sara, son-in-law, and 9-year-old granddaughter, a family of four was huddled in the basement of her house shivering.....
The entire city of Sarajevo has been besieged by Serb troops, which are hunting down Muslim civilians in the city.
A few days ago, Mrs. Hardaga witnessed the tragic shooting of a neighbor's family trying to escape the city in the street.
At this moment, the family of four had nowhere to escape, and could only hide in the basement of their home.
There is no decent food in the city, and for days it has only relied on grass-roots soup to feed itself....
There was another loud gunshot in the distance, and the old lady hardaga closed her eyes in despair, and couldn't help but think:
Could it be that in this crazy civil war, the Hardaga family is really doomed?
What Hardaga and her daughter Sara don't know is that Israel, thousands of miles away, a sworn enemy country with which their ancestors had not lived in harmony for nearly a thousand years, is now launching an operation to save their family.
And the order for this rescue operation was actually issued by Prime Minister Rabin!
A Jewish nation has launched an operation to save a Muslim family in the middle of a war far away, which makes the unknown outsider enough to shock his jaw!
Everything has a cause and a cause, and the result of the Jewish community saving the Muslim Hardaga family was planted decades ago.
And the person who planted it herself is the old lady of Hardaga herself.....
All this starts with another massacre that shook the world 50 years ago.....
In 1941, Nazi Germany swept through Europe, France and Poland were destroyed, and Britain was suppressed on the British Island and could not move.
The Nazis continued south, marching into Yugoslavia.
The German army marched straight in, and without much resistance, Yugoslavia soon announced its surrender and joined the German-Italian-Japanese Axis camp.
After occupying all of Yugoslavia, the Nazis began to continue their previous policy of -
Hunt down Jews in major cities, capture concentration camps and massacre them en masse....
The Yugoslav Army surrendered
In the famous Yugoslav city of Sarajevo, the arrest of Jews is getting harsher every day.
There is a Jewish family in Sarajevo named Kabiljo, and the man, Mr. Kabiljo, is anxious like an ant on a hot pot.
He had just heard a few days earlier that the Nazis had stormed a local synagogue and rounded up a large number of Jews.
It also burned the 400-year-old Pentateuch parchment scroll in the church.
In several major cities in Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of Jews have been killed, and the remaining Jews have either been thrown into concentration camps or sent to do hard work.....
To make matters worse, the Nazis took advantage of the historical origins of the feud between the major ethnic groups in Yugoslavia and rewarded them for reporting each other for harboring civilians who were hiding Jews.
Against this backdrop, Kabiljo did not dare to easily seek refuge from his acquaintances, and he was cornered when he saw his family.
On this day, he suddenly met a customer on the street with whom he had a business, the Muslim furniture merchant Hardaga.
The two exchanged a few brief greetings, and Hardaga took the initiative to ask about Kabiljo's recent situation:
"Dude, I haven't seen you in a while now, and your face is not very good, what the hell is going on?"
Mr. Hardaga
Kabiljo had to pour bitter water on Hardaga, saying that his family's house had been burned by the Nazis, and he escaped with his family and is now temporarily hiding in a dilapidated house in a slum....
Kabiljo only confided in his tragic situation, although the two sides had been in business smoothly before, but after all, a Muslim, a Jew, Kabiljo did not expect Hardaga to help him.
Unexpectedly, Hardaga actually took the initiative to speak:
"My wife and I have long heard about what happened in the Jewish Quarter, come to my house, I have always been my friend, your children are my children, come to my house, my family will be much safer." 」
Mr. Hardaga's invitation was tantamount to sending carbon in the snow, and Kabiljo moved into Hardaga's house with his family after a little thought.
Since then, the two families have eaten and lived together, and Kabiljo and his wife and daughter have hidden in Hardaga's house, basically afraid to go out.
However, the danger still came to the door from time to time, and the Gestapo ran to the house every three to five minutes to search.
Every time after checking the documents presented by Mr. Hardaga, the Gestapo had to go into the house and look around, at which point Hardaga and his wife's hearts would mention the eyes of the throat.
They knew that the Kabiljo family of three was holding their breath, hiding behind a large pile of clothes in the closet, and the atmosphere did not dare to come out.
Fortunately, the Gestapo did not search further, sat for a while, and then turned and left.
After all, hiding at home was not a long-term solution, and Mr. and Mrs. Hardaga began to think of other ways.
Hardaga inquired for a long time and finally found a way.
He decided to move the Kabiljo family to Mostar, 80 kilometres away, because it was an Italian occupation zone where control of the Jews was relatively easy.
Soon after, after proper preparation, Hardaga sent Mrs. Kabiljo and her daughter to Mostar.
Mr. Kabiljo will continue to remain in Sarajevo, transferring some of his previously hidden possessions before leaving.
Unexpectedly, this time for the transfer of property, Mr. Kabiljo almost buried his own life.
On an adventure, Mr. Kabiljo accidentally gets caught by the Gestapo on a street corner.
He continued to pretend to be a Muslim at first, but he did not expect to be recognized by the experienced Gestapo.
Mr. Kabiljo was quickly arrested and taken to the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp near Zagreb (present-day Croatia's capital).
This camp is home to not only Jews, but also Serbs, gypsies, who have been arrested for helping Jews.....
Jasenovac concentration camp
Fortunately, when winter came, Kabiljo and the others were not at risk of being "cleaned up" for the time being, but they were forced to work on the streets to clear the thick snow.
In the cold winter in Zagreb, Kabiljo and other prisoners shivered from the cold, and people in the labor force kept falling.
On the other side, the Hardaga couple waited left and right without waiting for Mr. Kabiljo to return home, and they had someone with the worst hunch in their minds:
Kabiljo must have been captured by the Gestapo.
Fortunately, the capture was not long, and the Hardaga couple decided to find a way to inquire about Kabiljo's whereabouts.
The Hardagas inquired for a long time, and finally heard that the Jasenovac concentration camp had imprisoned many Jews sent from Sarajevo, so they decided to go there to try their luck....
One morning, Mr. Kabiljo, described as withered, and other concentration camp inmates were once again escorted out of the streets to clear the snow.
As he straightened up wearily, he suddenly noticed a woman in a turban on a distant street corner looking at him.
That woman was none other than Mrs. Hardaga, who was looking around about Kabiljo's whereabouts!
Out of caution, the two just exchanged glances.
Later, while the guards were not ready, Mrs. Hardaga secretly gave Kabiljo and the other prisoners some food.
Kabiljo was also told about the route to facilitate escape within zagreb city.
Finally, one day, Mr. Kabiljo took advantage of the negligence of the Croatian guards who imprisoned him and fled decisively to safety.
He then returned to Sarajevo.
Mr. Kabiljo finally escaped and was temporarily safe.
Before he could go to Mostar to reunite with his family, something happened to Hardaga's family again.
It turned out that Mrs. Hardaga's father, an elderly Muslim man with a conscience, was caught by the Gestapo and publicly executed after making false documents to help the Jews escape.
The Hardagas were distraught when they received the news, but they did not have time to deal with their grief and seized the time to send Mr. Kabiljo away overnight.
When Mr. Kabiljo was finally reunited with his wife and daughter and said goodbye to the Hardagas, Mr. Kabiljo said emotionally to the Hardagas:
"If our family survives, we will definitely go to Jerusalem, and one day in the future, I hope you can go to the Holy Land where Muslims and Jews share, and we will be reunited."
Mr. and Mrs. Hardaga and Mr. Kabiljo hugged tightly.
At that time, they could not imagine that this sentence finally became a reality, but the time of realization was 50 years later.....
After that, the Kabiljo family went on many escapes and eventually survived the upheaval.
They also arrived at Jerusalem, the promised land of the Israelites.
After the end of World War II, the Axis powers were defeated, and the Nazi crimes of massacring Jews were revealed to the world.
The Holocaust Memorial was established in Jerusalem to comfort the millions of Jews who were slaughtered and to honor and gratitude to the people of all countries who saved Jewish lives during the war.
Kabiljo approached the officials of the Holocaust Memorial and demanded that the hardagas' selfless rescue of their family during World War II, as well as the story of Mrs. Hardaga's father, the elderly Muslim who forged documents to help Jews flee and was killed, be recorded in the official archives of the Holocaust Victims Memorial.
Time flies, and in the 1960s, the Kabiljo family contacted the hardaga family, a lifesaver.
They learned that Mr. Hardaga had passed away and that Mrs. Hardaga and her daughter Sara were still living in Sarajevo.
The two families have maintained correspondence.
However, Sara, the youngest daughter of the Hardaga family, never knew about the kindness and friendship between the previous generations.
After her father's death, Mrs. Hardaga never told her daughter about what happened during World War II.
It wasn't until 1984 that the Holocaust Victims Memorial in Jerusalem and the Kabiljo family invited Mrs. Hardaga to visit Israel.
Daughter Sara finally learned about the heroic deeds of her parents who risked their lives to save their fellow Jews.
4th from the right is Mrs. Hardaga
The youngest daughter, Sara, was so touched by this that she remembered a sentence that her mother had been teaching her for many years:
In the early 1990s, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia fell into an incomparably tragic civil war.
Croatia, Serbia, and Muslim ethnic groups attacked each other.
Yugoslavia, the once peaceful and beautiful country of Eastern Europe, suddenly became a hell on earth.
In just two years, from 1992 to 1994, the civil war displaced 3 million people, killed more than 100,000 people and subjected thousands of women to humiliation and abuse.
Sarajevo, surrounded by Serb troops, is even more miserable.
Muslims who tried to escape were found to have been killed.
In the 50 years after the invasion of Nazi Germany, Mrs. Hardaga once again witnessed the fall of Sarajevo.
This time, muslims, they became the targets of direct abuse.
Mrs. Hardaga was already a 76-year-old.
She and her daughter and son-in-law, granddaughter, hid in the basement, precarious.
What she didn't know was that thousands of miles away in Israel, the Kabiljo family, the Jews she had redeemed, had learned from the news what was happening in Sarajevo.
Members of the Kabiljo family immediately launched a request for help from the Israeli government as quickly as possible:
"Please send a task force to Sarajevo to save our benefactor, the Hardaga family!"
They first contacted the official Israeli reporter who had been sent to the front line in Sarajevo to ask him to find a way to find the Hardaga family.
The reporter braved the continuous artillery fire and tried his best to find the basement where Mrs. Hardaga and her family were hiding.
Brought to them news that the Kabiljo family had worked hard to rescue them.
Mrs. Hardaga's youngest daughter, Sara
After 50 years, Mrs. Hardaga once again burst into tears because of the name Kabiljo,
Also among the ruins of despair, I saw the hope of life.
The reporter first informed the Kabiljo family in Israel, mrs. Hardaga, daughter Sara and son-in-law, granddaughter are still alive.
The Kabiljo family immediately contacted the Holocaust Victims Memorial, hoping that they would notify the Israeli authorities of the rescue operation.
The memorial immediately contacted the leaders of the Bosnian region where Sarajevo is located for help, but was refused.
The Kabiljo family did not give up their efforts, and since the semi-official organization of the memorial was not enough, it invited people with more weight.
The Kabiljo family tried almost their best, doing everything they could to find a way to get help.
Finally, they connected with a man of great weight – then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin!
Prime Minister Rabin immediately issued instructions to rescue all "benefactors who have saved their fellow Jews" at all costs.
In early 1994, six buses full of refugees pulled out of devastated Sarajevo.
Sitting in one of the cars was Mrs. Hardaga, daughter Sara and son-in-law, and granddaughter, a family of four.
When the bus finally pulled out of the war zone, it began to send refugees in batches.
The officer in charge asked Mrs. Hardaga:
"You have left the war zone safely, where are you going?"
Mrs. Hardaga smiled and answered firmly and forcefully:
"To Jerusalem, I am going to meet my Jewish friends, which is our common holy place...".
Jerusalem
Fifty years ago, the Muslim Hardaga family risked their lives to save the Jewish Kabiljo family from the butcher's knife of the Nazis.
50 years later, the Kabiljo family did their best to save the Hardaga family, who were caught in a fierce conflict between the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia.
Today, the Hardaga and Kabiljo families have fulfilled the promise of their predecessors and come to Jerusalem, the common holy place.
Mrs. Hardaga's daughter, Sara, now works at the Holocaust Holocaust Victims Memorial, keeping and treasured thousands of archives of courage and humanity from the war.
Each archive, together with the archives of the Hardaga family, records an immortal story that shines with the brilliance of human nature.
And the story of the brilliance of human nature, it seems most appropriate to conclude with the classic line from "Schindler's List":
When you save one person's life, you save the whole world.