mohandasgandhi | mehreenkasana
Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War IINorman Gershman has become accustomed to the reactions from people who see his photos and read his stories about Muslims sheltering Jews and saving their lives during the Holocaust.
“I had people say ‘Muslims save Jews! How is that?’” the American Jewish fine art photographer told IslamOnline.net in a telephone interview.
Gershman has been engaged in a 5-year project that honors stories of Albanian Muslims’ heroism in saving thousands of Jews, who either lived in Albania or sought refugee there, during World War II.Beautiful. Spread this as far as you can. Well worth your time.
All acts of heroism are amazing but it’s sad that we’ve gotten to a point where we’re amazed when Jews and Muslims treat each other like human-beings because of this fostered ideological conflict between the two. With regard to the Holocaust, we typically pay more praise to Christians who aided Jews much more than we do Muslims, even though they, too, played a major role in saving the Nazi’s victims. We ignore these stories for whatever the reason and perpetuate the conventional wisdom and myth that Jews and Muslims just don’t like each other, even though, prior to the colonization of Palestine, they’ve been living peacefully with one another for hundreds and hundreds of years. Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is a European import.
Post-war in the United States, this myth is especially harmful because of the effect the Holocaust had on Americans - as we distributed footage of U.S. and Soviet forces liberating concentration camps, we felt a great deal of sympathy for the Jewish Holocaust survivors. U.S. mainstream society is particularly sensitive about anti-Semitism and this myth that Muslims and Jews don’t like each other only further demonizes Muslims, especially due to how protective we are over Israel.
