One good turn deserves another

KELLEY KORBIN

The 750-year-old Sarajevo Haggadah is considered to be one of the most impressive and beautiful Jewish manuscripts in the world. The illustrated book hails from Barcelona and has miraculously survived benign and tragic events alike – years of wine spills from seders and generations of anti-Semitic persecution that routinely threatened to destroy all vestiges of Judaism.

During the Second World War, the Haggadah resided in the National Museum of Sarajevo, where it had been for 50 years. When the Nazis came to claim the book, the museum's brave and altruistic curator, Dervis Korkut, couldn't stand to see them destroy the precious work. So, at great personal risk, he lied to the Germans and told them the Haggadah had already been taken by some of their compatriots. He then arranged to have the Haggadah smuggled out of Sarajevo by a Muslim cleric, who hid it until he was able to safely return the manuscript to the museum at the end of the war.

But this was only one of numerous acts of heroism conducted by Korkut, who had many Jewish friends and never hid his disapproval of Jewish persecution during the war. Together with his Albanian wife, Servet, he even hid a Jewish girl in their home in 1942, passing her off as a Muslim servant. The girl was Mira Papo and it was her eternal gratitude to the Korkut family that eventually earned them the Yad Vashem designation of Righteous Among the Nations – and saved Korkut's daughter and her family from potential annihilation during the Bosnian crisis in 1999.

Korkut's third child, Lamija Jaha, was born in 1955 in Sarajevo, many years after her father's now celebrated acts of selflessness toward the Jews and 13 years after her brother Munib was born.

The postwar years were not good for the outspoken Muslim intellectual, Korkut, who did not hide his disdain for the communist regime and who was subsequently imprisoned, accused in part of collaborating with the Germans during the war. Jaha believes this obviously false allegation was just an excuse to put her father away for his candid observations on the government and for his position as a powerful Muslim in the midst of a secular communist regime.

According to Jaha, her father never spoke about his six years in jail, but he was certainly in solitary confinement for a great part of the time and this was life-altering for the energetic, educated, intelligent man who spoke 10 languages. "As I understand it, jail did something to him that made him become more closed; he became a person who didn't want to speak about the past," Jaha told the Independent.

Papo was also living in Sarajevo after the war, with her husband and young family – by now they were in a position of authority in the Yugoslavian army, because they had both joined the communist partisan resistance at the end of the war. She heard about Korkut's trial and wanted to testify on his behalf, but her husband, concerned about their safety and position, forbade it. Papo never forgave herself for failing to defend the man who had saved her life.

For her part, Jaha grew up unaware of her father's heroism, until his death in 1969. Although just 14 when he died, Jaha was deeply influenced by her father: "I liked my father very much. I was very connected with him; he was very honest, very intelligent. We understood each other."

At Korkut's funeral and in the mourning period that followed, people began to talk about the myriad acts of kindness that Korkut had exercised on their behalf. That's when his children became aware of his role in saving the Haggadah and, more importantly, the young Papo.

"My father was a person who was helping everyone and never talked about it later. When he died, many people came to visit us to pay condolences and were telling us that he helped them find a job, get credit, to be a guarantor, to give them money, to help somebody find a place to live – whatever they asked, he always was willing to help them, but we didn't know anything about that [until after his death].

"I was so proud when they were coming and telling all these things because I loved him very much and it was one more reason to love him more and it was very hard for me when he died. I loved my mother but I was a little bit afraid of her, she was an old-fashioned woman. My father was more tolerant."

Jaha said that though her father never expounded on his good deeds, he infused her with his philosophy on philanthropy. "My father thought that if you do something you don't need to mention it later because, if you mention it, you lose the good things that you are doing."

The tale of Korkut's generosity came full circle during the Bosnian crisis of the 1990s, after Papo, who had since made aliyah, read an article about Korkut's death. All this time, she had assumed he had perished in prison and was surprised to find he had survived. Still looking for a way to honor her savior and she finally got her opportunity to testify on his behalf – at Yad Vashem.

In March 1999, Jaha, who had been safely living in Pristina during the war in Sarajevo, was now in mortal danger, with the NATO bombing of Serb targets in the city and the subsequent mass exodus of ethnic Albanians who feared genocide. The Jahas managed to get their teenage children to safety in Budapest, but they were stuck in the city with no electricity or phone and a limited supply of food and water.

In April, when the Jahas' saw from their window a steady stream of fleeing Albanians marching through the streets of Pristina, they knew what it must have been like to be Papo 55 years earlier. It was only a matter of time before they would be expelled from their home. They quickly packed their most treasured belongings, including a copy of the certificate from Yad Vashem, which Jaha tucked into a pocket, and made a six-hour journey on foot to the train station with thousands of other refugees. They waited until they could board a train out of Kosovo.

Jaha was shoved through the train's window. "There were 27 people in that compartment that was supposed to be for six people," she recalled.

Eventually, the Jahas found themselves on the Macedonian border with hundreds of thousands of other refugees and no embassies open at which to seek asylum. With nowhere to turn, they sourced out the local Jewish community and showed them her parents' Yad Vashem certificate. "They said, 'the Jewish people never forgot the people who helped them.' "

The Jewish Macedonian community then contacted the Israeli government, who immediately offered the Jahas and their children passage to Israel and full citizenship, in recognition of the Korkuts' efforts during the Second World War.

The Jahas remained in Israel for eight years: they learned Hebrew, landed jobs and their children were educated there. However, it wasn't a honeymoon. After the initial promises from the Israeli government and a lot of press coverage, it still took a lot of perseverance to get Israeli citizenship and, in the early years, they were living in the midst of the intifada, where they feared for their lives every time they boarded a bus. "I was worried for the children.... It was not worse than Kosovo, but it was very scary," said Jaha.

Last year, their daughter landed a job in Vancouver and the entire family moved with her. So far, they are finding the immigrant experience here difficult. "I miss in one way Israel here because here it is hard to make connections and find people who are willing to help you. You know, in Israel there are a lot of newcomers and people are really trying to help these people arrange their lives there.... Israel is not an easy place to live, so you have to try to help people who come to find themselves there. I miss this here."

After a year of living here, Jaha and her husband have not yet found jobs. They live in Oakridge, "a Jewish neighborhood," said Jaha, where they feel comfortable. "In Israel, I felt like an Israeli and equal in all ways," she explained. "Here, I am an Israeli but not Jewish and, in Vancouver, that's not so simple." She said she and her family live in a kind of cultural no-man's land in a community that makes a direct correlation between Israel and Jews.

Jaha will tell her family's story at the annual general meeting of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Society on June 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Kelley Korbin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

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