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A Muslim family saved a Jewish one from the Nazis. 50 years later, the Jewish family returned the favor in Sarajevo.

(JTA) — In 1941 Sarajevo, a Muslim woman hid her Jewish friend from fascist roundups. Half a century later, that same Muslim woman was trapped in the besieged capital during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War — and her Jewish friend made sure she got out.

These real events inspired “Sevap/Mitzvah,” a short film directed by Sabina Vajrača that won the 2023 Humanitas Prize, among other awards, and has qualified to be considered for the 2024 Oscar for best live action short.

The film has been shown across the world, including at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Joyce Forum Jewish Short Film Festival in San Diego. Upcoming screenings include the Centre Film Festival in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 1; the Ojai Film Festival in Ojai, California, on Nov. 5; and the Lake County Film Festival in Grayslake, Illinois, between Nov. 3-12.

The Arabic word “Sevap” and the Hebrew word “Mitzvah” translate to the same meaning: A good deed.

“I wanted to tell a story about Jews and Muslims coexisting peacefully and happily, and helping one another, which is the narrative that we don’t really hear,” Vajrača told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Vajrača herself escaped the Bosnian War as a teenager, arriving in the United States as a refugee.

As the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Sarajevo was heavily bombed, its synagogue looted and 400-year-old Torah scrolls burned. The Jewish Kabiljo family was among those who fled to the forests and returned to find their home destroyed.

A couple of Muslim friends and neighbors, Mustafa and Zejneba Hardaga, offered the Kabiljos shelter in their home. At the risk of their own execution, the Hardagas hid Josef Kabiljo, his wife Rifka and their two children from the Gestapo and the Ustaša — the fascist movement that ruled the regions of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II.

According to their faith, the women in the Hardaga family covered their faces with a veil in front of men who were not their family. But to signal that the Kabiljos were welcome, Mustafa Hardaga told Zejneba and her sister-in-law Bachriya that they could remove their veils before Josef Kabiljo.

Josef later testified to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority: “Never before had a strange man stayed with them. They welcomed us with the words: ‘Josef, you are our brother, and your children are like our children. Feel at home and whatever we own is yours.’”

The Ustaša set out to purge its state of Serbs, Jews and Roma through labor and death camps. By the end of the war, they succeeded in murdering 12,000 of Bosnia’s 14,000 Jews. But the Kabiljo family survived, eventually making their way to Israel.

Filmmaker Sabina Vajrača was 14 during the Bosnian War. (Joshua Sarlo)

Fifty years later, 76-year-old Zejneba Hardaga found herself at the center of another genocide in Sarajevo. (By that time, her husband had died.) Serb forces embarked on a campaign to rid Bosnia of non-Serbs, the majority of whom were Bosnian Muslims, also known as Bosniaks. Sarajevo was blockaded from food, water and power between April 1992 and February 1996 — the longest siege in modern history.

Hardaga sheltered in a basement with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, subsisting for weeks at a time on soup made of grass they picked nearby. Outside, Sarajevo was shelled daily and snipers targeted people leaving their homes. Over 11,000 people were killed during the siege.

In Jerusalem, Rifka Kabiljo and her family were watching Bosnia’s devastation on the news. They contacted an Israeli journalist who was covering the war, asking him to confirm that Hardaga was alive.

Upon learning she was still in Sarajevo, the Kabiljos appealed for help from Yad Vashem, which had recognized Hardaga and her family as Righteous Among the Nations in 1984.

Yad Vashem’s authority did not sway the president of Bosnia, so the Kabiljos took their case all the way to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

In early 1994, the Hardagas joined 300 others in a convoy of six buses leaving Sarajevo — the last rescue of mostly Jewish refugees organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Sarajevo’s Jewish community. The family was given a choice of destinations, and Zejneba chose to join her friend Rifka in Israel. She died there a year later.

Vajrača, a Bosnian Muslim, started thinking about stories of Jews and Muslims who rescued each other during a conversation with her late grandmother — who admitted that she was haunted by her failure to save a childhood best friend. One morning in 1941, when she was about 9 years old, she watched from a window as her Jewish friend who lived next-door was rounded up with her family. Vajrača’s grandmother tried to run outside but her parents held her back, saying it was dangerous outside. The Jewish girl and her family died in a concentration camp.

“She said to me, ‘I remembered it because 50 years later, they knocked on my door and came for me,’” recounted Vajrača, whose grandmother survived the Bosnian War. “‘They took me, and I thought, perhaps if we had saved them 50 years ago this wouldn’t have happened.’”

Vajrača was 14 years old when her northern Bosnian town was overrun by Serb forces. Her family was quickly targeted, as her father worked in humanitarian aid for victims of the war. In retaliation, the Serbs threatened to take Vajrača to a concentration camp, where women and girls were systematically raped. Her parents asked everyone they knew for help getting her out of the country.

“In the end, the people who saved me were two women, both Christian — one Croatian and one Serb,” Vajrača told JTA. “They’re the ones who saved my life, even at the risk of their own. So the story that I tell in this film is personal in that way, that it happened to me as well.”

Zejneba Hardaga’s daughter, Sara Pecanac, still lives in Jerusalem. She converted to Judaism and worked at Yad Vashem for many years.

In a 2013 interview, Pecanac recalled how her mother asked to meet Rabin a few months after their arrival. After a bit of chatting, Hardaga said she wanted to offer Rabin some advice.

“The whole place went quiet,” said Pecananc. “Who was this old woman to give advice to the prime minister of Israel? He said ‘OK,’ and she said, ‘Please, try to make peace in the Middle East. Don’t let Jerusalem become Sarajevo.’”


The post A Muslim family saved a Jewish one from the Nazis. 50 years later, the Jewish family returned the favor in Sarajevo. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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