Rezniqi Arslan

Rezniqi, Arslan Mustafa During the Second World War Dr. Chaim Abrabanel, a physician from Skopje in Macedonia, had been enlisted in the Yugoslav army. His military unit was stationed in Kosovo, and when a typhoid epidemic broke out, Dr. Abrabanel was called to treat the sick people, among them members of Rezniqi, a family of Albanian Muslims. Arslan Rezniqi was very grateful to Dr. Abrabanel who had cured his son Mustafa, and maintained warm relations with the military doctor. In April 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia, the country was divided, and Kosovo became a part of Serbia, which was under German military rule. Following the invasion, Abrabanel’s military unit was taken prisoner by the Germans. When Rezniqi heard that the doctor was in a POW camp, he began looking for ways to help him. Arslan and his son put on traditional Albanian clothes and smuggled themselves into the POW camp. They reached the section where the Jewish prisoners were held, found Dr. Abrabanel and asked him to put on the extra set of Albanian dress they had brought with them. Thus they were able to get him out of the camp. They took Abrabanel to their home where he stayed until he could return to his family in Skopje. When he began his return journey, Rezniqi accompanied him and made sure that he was safe. Chaim Abrabanel, his wife Bertha and their children managed to evade the deportations from Macedonia and survived the Holocaust, but both Chaim and Bertha lost their parents and each one of them lost their six siblings and their families. After the war Dr. Abrabanel became the director of the hospital in Bitola (Monastir), where the Jewish community had been wiped out by the deportations. Their granddaughter Rachel remembers visits of the Rezniqis in Bitola. Her grandmother would prepare special food and the visits were very festive and memorable events. In 1963 the Abrabanel family were struck by tragedy for a second time, when two of their children were killed in the Skopjeearthquake. Dr. Abrabanel and his wife took their orphaned 7-year-pld granddaughter Rachel, immigrated to Israel and raised her. Throughout her childhood they would tell Rachel family stories and how her grandfather was rescued by Rezniqi. Following her grandparents deaths in 1981 (Bertha) and 1984 (Chaim), Rachel traveled to Macedonia and began to research her family history. In 2007 she turned to Yad Vashem and asked to recognize her grandfather's rescuer as Righteous Among the Nations. On 12 February 2008 Yad Vashem recognized Arslan Mustafa Rezniqi as Rigtheous Among the Nations.