Survival in Sarajevo -
when friends helped friends
Lessons from the past.
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In Poland: Katarzyna Kotula
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Derviš Korkut
Derviš Korkut (b. 1888), was the curator of the municipal museum in Sarajevo, and knew many languages. Korkut was a well-known person in the city and, among Jews he was known as a friend with a deep interest in the culture and folklore of the Jews of Sarajevo – he even published articles on this subject. In November 1941, Donkica Papo, a Jewish Sarajevo native, joined Tito’s partisans with a number of her friends from the Jewish youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. At some point in 1942, when their unit was ambushed, they were ordered to disperse, and Papo eventually found her way back to Sarajevo, where she hoped to find a member of her family who could shelter her. However, when she found no one there to help her, Papo met a man who had worked with her father. He brought her to the museum building, and introduced her to Derviš Korkut as a Jewish girl who needed a place of refuge.
Derviš Korkut was a religious Muslim. He explained to Papo that his young wife had recently given birth to a son and offered her shelter in his home in the guise of a Muslim servant. Papo quickly accepted the offer. Korkut then took her home and introduced Papo to his wife, Servet, who gave Papo a warm welcome. The Korkuts gave her a room in the attic, dressed her in traditional Muslim garb, and introduced her as a Muslim to their guests. While hidden there, Papo managed to make contact with some family members in another city and, after five months with the Korkuts, they helped her obtain a travel permit so she could go and join her family. Some time later, Papo (later Mira Baković) rejoined the partisans, where she served as a nurse attached to a fighting unit until the end of the war.
Derviš Korkut also helped to save the famous Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world. One day during the war, representatives of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, an organization established by the Germans to plunder the cultural and artistic treasures of the Jews, arrived at the Sarajevo museum to confiscate the famous 14th century Sarajevo Haggadah. When they confronted Korkut, he told them that some Germans had already taken the artifact. They accepted his story, although the haggadah was actually carefully hidden in Korkut’s home. After the war, Derviš Korkut returned the haggadah to the municipal museum.
On December 14, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Derviš and Servet Korkut as Righteous Among the Nations.
Zeyneba Hardaga
Zeyneba 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, Zeyneba 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, Zeyneba 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. Zeyneba 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 to Mostar, 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 Zeyneba’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 Zeyneba 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.
In the wake of the war in Bosnia in 1994, Zeyneba Hardaga (by then Sušic) and her family were invited by the Israeli authorities to come to Israel. Zeyneba and her family were on the last rescue convoy organized by the Sarajevo Jewish community. When arriving to Israel, Zeyneba was welcomed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
On January 29, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Mustafa Hardaga, Zeyneba Hardaga-Sušic and Izet and Bachriya Hardaga as Righteous Among the Nations.