Hardaga Mustafa & Zejneba

Hardaga, Mustafa Hardaga-Sušic, Zayneba Hardaga, Izet Hardaga, Bachriya Zayneba and Mustafa Hardaga were long-time residents of Sarajevo. Their family was a pious, patriarchal Muslim family in which women donned a veil and everyone strictly observed all the religious laws and rites. On property that belonged to the Hardagas’, which bordered on their home, Josef Kabilio established a pipe factory, which over the years developed into the largest of its type in all Yugoslavia. The two families had excellent neighborly relations and each maintained a high level of respect for the other’s customs. The friendship between the two families that had begun many years before the war was transformed dramatically on April 14, 1941, when the Germans shelled the city. During the bombardment, people fled to the surrounding forests, only returning once the immediate danger had subsided. When people started returning, Zayneba Hardaga rushed to see what had happened to their neighbors, the Kabilios. She found Josef with his wife, Rivka, and their two children, Benjamin and Tova (later Greenberg), on the street. Their house had been destroyed during the bombing. Without hesitation, Zayneba brought the Jewish family into her home, where her husband and his brother, Izet, and his wife, Bachriya, welcomed their friends with outstretched arms. “Whatever is ours will be yours. We’ll share everything like family – feel as if you are in your own home,” they said. Zayneba later recalled: “This was the first time that a foreign man had slept in our house, the first time we unveiled ourselves before others. But Josef was like a brother to us – if not before then, then certainly from the day he entered our home.” Across the street from the Hardaga house was the Gestapo headquarters and notices were posted everywhere warning that anyone harboring Jews in their home would be killed. Josef Kabilio refused to expose his friends to such danger. Instead, he found ways to transfer his family toMostar, which was then in the Italian occupied zone, while he hid in a hospital. However, someone informed on Kabilio and he was caught, imprisoned and then taken for forced labor within the city of Sarajevo itself. Already sentenced to death, he managed to escape – the only one of ten to succeed in doing so. The only place he could run to was back to the Hardagas’ home. This time, he stayed with them for two months, hidden, without ever leaving their home. Through the windows, Kabilio watched Jews being deported, or being maltreated in the Gestapo building opposite before being flung off it from the third floor and onto the street. Before long, there was not a single Jew left in the city. Kabilio felt that he could stay with his friends no longer – it was simply too dangerous for those harboring him. Thus, with their help, Kabilio managed to move to the Italian occupied zone, where he found his family and joined the partisans. After the war, the Kabilios returned to Sarajevo and again found a temporary home with the Hardagas. A box of jewelry that they had left with their friends for safekeeping had remained in the Hardagas’ home and they returned it to the Kabilios unopened, which gave them at least something small to start a new life with. The Kabilio family later immigrated to Israel. When Yad Vashem recognized the Hardagas and Zayneba’s father as Righteous Among the Nations, a Muslim Qadi, Dr. Sughi Abu-Ghosh, recited a prayer in the Hall of Remembrance. He quoted a passage from Quran Al Fatihah assuring Zayneba Hardaga that her deeds and those of her late husband, of her sister-in-law Bachriya, and her husband, were in the spirit of Islam’s teachings. Remembering her father, Ahmed Sadiq-Šaralop*, Hardaga said: “As his burial place is unknown, may this tree that I plant here be a memorial for him.” In the wake of the war in Bosnia in 1994, Zayneba Hardaga (by then Sušic) and her family were invited by the Israeli authorities to come to Israel. There, theKabilio family received them warmly and took measures to ease their stay in Israel. Her daughter, Aida Pećanac, her husband, and their daughter remained in Israel, converted to Judaism, and changed their names. Aida, who changed her name to Sara, is employed in the archives at Yad Vashem. On January 29, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Mustafa Hardaga, Zayneba Hardaga-Sušic and Izet and Bachriya Hardaga as Righteous Among the Nations.