Just Loved Reading:

The Grand Mosque of Paris

MG/Non-Fiction

DeSaix, Deborah Durland and Ruelle, Karen Gray. The Grand Mosque of Paris. New York: Holiday House, 2009.

The Grand Mosque of Paris was a gift from the French government to the Muslim population of France in honor of the half million Muslims from their French colonies who fought for France during World War I.

After the Nazi occupation of their country, French Jews were in danger of arrest and deportation. The Grand Mosque, located on the Left Bank,  became a place of refuge and temporary escape for Jewish men, women and children, Allied military and prisoner of war escapees. Many of them stopped at the mosque for only a few hours or a few days and then continued their journey out of Paris. It was too dangerous for most of them to do otherwise.

The Nazis and the occupied French Vichy government suspected that Jews and others were hiding at the mosque. Its rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, issued Certificates of Conversion and Muslim birth certificates to them at great danger to him and the Muslims living in the mosque’s apartments.The rector issued these false identification papers whenever possible. Someone (possibly Si Kaddour Benghabrit) even went so far as to carve the name of one man’s grandfather on a blank tombstone.

During the 1930s and 1940s, most of the resident Muslims at the mosque were Kabyle or Berber emigres from Kabylia in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria  and it was hard to discern any physical difference between the Jews and Muslims from that region. Religious differences aside, there were also cultural similarities that bonded them.

Some were also members of the Resistance.

The Jews and the escapees from the war or prisoner-of-war camps went through a sub-basement, tunnels, underground rivers and passageways under the mosque. A small handful stayed in the mosque especially children and women. The children were often too young to know how to escape and blended with the families of the handful of people who lived and worked inside of the monastery.

While some of the Kabyle and Berbers were members of the Resistance, many were workers. They used peniches or barges to carry people fleeing from the Nazis to safety along with their cargoes of large vessels of wine.

WHY I LOVED READING THIS BOOK:

Historians tell us that history repeats itself. Once, people of two different religions that are now at war with each other once had a history of coöperation and respect. During the occupation of France during World War II, Muslims helped Jews escape arrest and deportation to concentration camps at great peril to their own lives.

The authors thoroughly researched the book as much as they could but the main players are all dead and little authentic documentation exists. Much of the story about these courageous people remains unfortunately lost.

However, in 1990, filmmaker Derri Berkani, released the film, Une Resistance Oubliee: La Mosque which tells the story of the Grand Mosque of Paris during WWII.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rosbottom, Ronald C. When Paris Went Dark, The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944. NY: Little, Brown, 2015.