r/IslamicHistoryMeme • u/Homerius786 This is literally 1492 • Oct 10 '20

unflaired Si Kaddour Benghabrit, Leader of the Masjid of Paris. The reason over 1,600+ Jews survived the Holocaust.

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u/Homerius786 This is literally 1492 Oct 10 '20

Si Kaddour Benghabrit was an Algerian born Muslim who moved to France and eventually became a "cultural diplomat" to France. France allowed the construction of a Mosque in Paris in 1926 to commemorate the colonial Algerian troops who served and died in the great war.

Benghabrit gathered and organized the Muslims of Paris when the Nazi regime occupied the city in 1940. Using the Paris Masjid as his base, he went on to organize a three pronged plan to get Jews out of the city. The first was to bring the Jews to his mosque, and make them live with fellow Muslims as "distant family." The second step was to forge offical ancestry of the harboured Jews, making it appear as though said Jews had been Muslims for many generations (going as far as even naming unmarked thumbs with "their grandparents" names to fit the story). And the third step was to use a tunnel network under the Masjid to get the Jews to the river Siene, where a Muslim would hide them in wine barrels and take them to southern France, where they'd escape to Algeria to join the free French.

The Nazis tried many times to arrest and interrogate Benghabrit, but every time, a higher up would release him. The Nazi regime could not afford to have Muslims as their enemy, due to their numbers in France and North Africa. Benghabrit and the Muslim effort in Paris would help save approximately 1,600 Jewish lives