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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.’”
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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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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.