Dr Robert Satloff,  now the executive director of the Washington  Institute for Near-East Policy, was curious about the absence of Arab names from the Jerusalem Wall of Remembrance maintained by Yad Vashem. He posted an inquiry on a popular website maintained by the Tunisian Jewish Community, probably “Harissa.com” for the “Tunes” among us, soliciting experiential accounts about the treatment of members of the Tunisian Jewish minority by their compatriots of the Tunisian Arab majority while the country was under German occupation.    

A response posted by Mrs Anny Boukris (“Boukhris”) who, in 1942,  was the 11 year old daughter of Jacob and Odette Boukris, prompted  Dr Satloff to pursue the matter further. His inquiry was answered by an eighty page testimonial account from Mrs Anny Boukris wherein she credited Mr Khaled Abdelwahhab  with saving the Boukhris extended family and their relatives and friends (the Uzzan family) by evacuating and hiding about 23 people in his family’s farm in Tlelsa, about 20 kilometers outside Mahdia, making many trips at night to avoid detection by the Nazis . She reported that he visited them almost daily to comfort them and tend to their needs for about four months until April 1943 when the British Army took Mahdia from the Germans. Mrs Anny Boukris reported that her parents, Jacob and Odette Boukris, believed Mr Khaled Abdelwahhab would have been killed had the Germans found out he was hiding Jews. She further recounted that, after this horrendous ordeal was over, Mr Khaled Abdelwahhab often visited the Boukhris family home to share their Shabbat dinners in Mahdia. Furthermore, after she married and moved to Sbeitla, he stayed in touch and visited her and her husband in that mining town in western Tunisia.  

Our distinguished compatriot Khaled Abdelwahhab died in 1997. Shortly after she wrote to Dr Satloff in 2003, our compatriot Anny Boukris expired.     

Confirming that “good deeds outlive their doers”, on Monday April 16, 2007 five hundred people gathered at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, California  to celebrate the humanity of this brave compatriot. Among other honored guests, was  Ms Nadia Bijaoui, daughter of the late Anny Boukris whose account of her gratitude to a friend did not go unnoticed by the keen mind and the intellectual curiosity of Dr Robert Satloff. Ms Faiza Abdelwahhab, daughter of the late Khaled Abdelwahhab, was also on hand to acknowledge the recognition of her father as a “Righteous Gentile”.  She is quoted having said “...I extend my hand as a sincere and truthful bridge to my Jewish brothers and sisters. Together we can open a space for dialogue and encounter between our peoples.”. She added that in a world haunted by the specter of war this Holocaust ceremony should comfort those who dream of peace.

The name of Khaled Abdelwahhab joins an illustrious list containing the likes of Oskar Schindler, Shiune and Yukiko Sugihara and Raoul Wallenberg. A list of  mere humans who, in the face of mankind’s capacity to do the unthinkable, took the right action believing that doing nothing was unacceptable and unthinkable.

By Raouf Khelil