The Other Schindlers
Steven Spielberg's epic film focuses on only one of many unsung heroes
As conditions for Jews--and the people who sheltered them--worsened, Yosef Cavilio managed to smuggle his family to the safer Italian-occupied zone of Yugoslavia. Yosef himself, fearing for his Muslim hosts, left the Hardaga home and hid at a local hospital. He was soon arrested and scheduled for shipment to a death camp. Even then, the Hardagas refused to turn their backs. Walking in chains to prison, Cavilio saw a veiled woman staring and crying. From that day on, Zayneba Hardaga found ways to smuggle food to Yosef and several other Jewish prisoners. Not long after, her own father, Ahmed Sadik, was executed by Nazi collaborators for sheltering yet another Jewish family.
When the war ended, the Cavilios, like many other Holocaust survivors, emigrated to the new State of Israel. But they never lost touch with the Hardagas. In 1985, testimony from Yosef Cavilio resulted in Zayneba and Mustafa Hardaga's being honored in Jerusalem as "Righteous Gentiles."
Then, this year, as Sarajevo struggled under another holocaust of sorts, the story came full circle. "When I saw on television what was happening in Bosnia," says Tova Cavilio Greenberg, now a 56-year-old Israeli teacher, "I knew what I had to do." After a few frantic phone calls, the Hardagas' daughter Aida, her Serbian husband and their 10-year-old daughter were brought to safety and new homes in Israel. And last month, Zayneba Hardaga, now a widow, was evacuated to Tel Aviv. "I have come from hell to the Garden of Eden," the 76 year-old woman told the crowd greeting her. Had she not been afraid to do what she had done during World War II? "Compassion," Zayneba Hardaga said, "knows no fear."
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