I had no clue this man existed till I read the article on him yesterday.
Abdol Hossein Sardari is regarded as a Muslim "Oskar Schindler" & he saved the lives of thousands of Iranian Jews in wartime Paris, according to a new book ‘In The Lion's Shadow’. He risked everything to help fellow Iranians escape the Nazis.
Abdol-Hossein Sardari was a junior Iranian diplomat & he helped up to2,000 Iranian Jews flee France. He issued them new style Iranian passports.The new identity papers made it much easier to travel across Europe.
When Britain and Russia invaded Iran in September 1941, Sardari's humanitarian task become more perilous. Sardari was ordered to return home but despite being stripped of his diplomatic immunity and status, he resolved to remain in France and carry on helping the Iranian Jews, at considerable risk to his own safety, using money from his inheritance to keep his office going.
The author Fariborz Mokhtari said he hoped that the story, and the testimony of survivors, would help undo "popular misconceptions" about Iran and its people and show the "general cultural propensity of Iranians to be tolerant".
"Here you have a Muslim Iranian who goes out of his way, risks his life, certainly risks his career and property and everything else, to save fellow Iranians," he says.
"There is no distinction 'I am Muslim, he is Jew' or whatever."
Source:
Abdol Hossein Sardari is regarded as a Muslim "Oskar Schindler" & he saved the lives of thousands of Iranian Jews in wartime Paris, according to a new book ‘In The Lion's Shadow’. He risked everything to help fellow Iranians escape the Nazis.
Abdol-Hossein Sardari was a junior Iranian diplomat & he helped up to2,000 Iranian Jews flee France. He issued them new style Iranian passports.The new identity papers made it much easier to travel across Europe.
When Britain and Russia invaded Iran in September 1941, Sardari's humanitarian task become more perilous. Sardari was ordered to return home but despite being stripped of his diplomatic immunity and status, he resolved to remain in France and carry on helping the Iranian Jews, at considerable risk to his own safety, using money from his inheritance to keep his office going.
The author Fariborz Mokhtari said he hoped that the story, and the testimony of survivors, would help undo "popular misconceptions" about Iran and its people and show the "general cultural propensity of Iranians to be tolerant".
"Here you have a Muslim Iranian who goes out of his way, risks his life, certainly risks his career and property and everything else, to save fellow Iranians," he says.
"There is no distinction 'I am Muslim, he is Jew' or whatever."
Source:
