Two families from Sarajevo

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. This Heart and Soul is the first of a two-part series looking at Jewish-Muslim relations in different parts of the world, starting with a story of two families from Sarajevo.

0:56The Hardegas and the Kabylios. two families with two religions brought together in the shadow of two different wars. The relation between Senor Cabillo and my papay was something incredible. They were like two friends, two brothers. From the Second World War, where the Hardega family hid their Jewish neighbours, the Cabillos, just metres from the Gestapo. Do not leave the house, not speak to anyone. The Gestapo officers were exactly across from my bedroom window. To the siege of Sarajevo 50 years later, when the Jewish community helped rescue the Hardegas. The Jewish community gave offer to my mother-in-law, if we want all of us to move from Sarajevo, they can help us to go out.

1:50In a city which still prides itself on the good relations between its Muslim and Jewish communities. Every life matters. Let us make commitment that we will protect each other, like we did in this long history of Jewish-Muslim relations. I'm Alex Strangways-Booth, and I'll be travelling to Sarajevo to hear the story of neighbouring families and how their friendship helped each other survive war, not once, but twice.

2:26In Sarajevo, history is everywhere, from the 500-year-old mosques, synagogue buildings and ancient churches to the bullet-pocked apartment blocks and red paint on the ground showing where people were killed by grenades during the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. The busy shopping streets are thronged with tourists from Muslim countries, some of the women in burqas, wandering side by side with Westerners in shorts and T-shirts. In the bustling old city of Sarajevo, the Jewish and Muslim communities have lived in harmony for centuries. Here, at the start of the Second World War, Saler Hardiga lived with his Muslim family, his father Mustafa, his mother Zaneba, his sister Sara, and all his uncle's family as well.

3:30There wasn't a Jewish ghetto here and the Cabello family had a workshop on the same site as the Hardega house and they were friends. Salah's now 88 and lives in Mexico City. When I spoke to him, his daughter Christina was with him and in the programme you'll hear her helping with his mix of Spanish, Bosnian and English. Salat was only a small child when his family took on the dangerous responsibility of helping the Jewish Kabilio family. His business was behind our house and the relation between Senor Kabilio and my papay was something incredible. They were like two friends, two brothers. The women in the family were also friends.

4:16And that friendship remained strong as the Jews started to face persecution at the beginning of World War II. Until the war, nobody talked about the difference between Jude and our house. For my father, it was important that he was his friend. Nobody talking about the difference, religion or something like this. But why was this difference between Muslims and Jews never mentioned?

4:51Sarajevo has been a Muslim city since the Ottomans arrived in the 1400s. And 100 years later, the Jews, fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal, were welcomed here. Upper Hills now, the neighbourhood that we are past a little bit, That was mostly the Jews who were living there. But we never had a ghetto. I've met up with Vladimir Andola, who is a member of Sarajevo's Jewish community and president of Sarajevo's Jewish charity, which is called La Benevolencia. So this was the entrance of the synagogue, but here you can still see some of the ornaments which are recognisable for the Jewish people, so like Magen David, Menorah, etc.

5:36Yes, so on the side of the building, all the Star of Davids and the menorahs to show, you know, but it's been through some wear and tear, hasn't it? Yes, I mean, this is building, you know, unusable anymore, I believe. But it was a synagogue back then, it was wonderful. A synagogue and a lot of Jews were living here, you know, and still there are some Jewish people who are still living there. Vladimir took me back down into the city centre to show me the synagogue which would have been near the Hardegas' house. It has a vast dome. Now it's completely hidden from view by newer buildings. But it's huge, almost like a cathedral.

6:16And in the 1940s, the dome was copper. So this is... Also, we can enter here. I can show you some of this. So this is, like, original walls of the synagogue. On the top of it, there is a cupola, which still has the ornaments. But was this more kind of modern part also the synagogue as well? Yes, this was the part of the synagogue. You know, like all these buildings, all these amenities within the building was the synagogue.

6:49The community grew in the late 1800s when Eastern European Jews, fleeing persecution, were also welcomed in, swelling the Jewish population to 12 ,000. At that point before 1941, the Jewish life in Sarajevo was very active here, so we were present in the society in a major way. In the early years of the war, the then Yugoslavia was controlled by a Croatian government, influenced heavily by Italy's fascist regime, with a much feared militia known as the Ustasha. Ustashas were brutal to the Jews and to the Serbs during the Second World War, Even there are stories that German generals were horrified by the brutality of Osasa.

7:39When the Germans came to Sarajevo in 1941, the first thing they did was ransack the synagogues. And this is where the friends and neighbours of the Jewish Kabylio family became their saviours. 80 years on, Salles still remembers how the Kabilios went into hiding in the Hardega house They live in the basement During the day, during the night they come out and they take the fresh air and we play one or two hours, no more because the children go to sleep But it is amazing because your parents must have made sure that you as small children didn't say anything about this other family in your house.

8:33You must understand that my father was a very strong character. He was an old man, but nobody discussed with my father. We were four children, two of my father and two of his brother. but nobody never, never said nothing. No, it was niños tranquilos. Keep quiet, children, is what he told them. Salah says that when his father told them to be quiet, no one would dare to disobey. And what was even more extraordinary is that there was a German headquarters opposite their house. Our house, it was the front of the general of Germany. This is five metres at the distance between one and another. That is something incredible, really.

9:30Dearest and much-loved Salco, just a few more years and it will be half a century since our paths first crossed in Sarajevo. These words, voiced by an actor, are from the father of the Jewish family, Joseph Cabillo. They're taken from a letter written to Saleh addressing him by his pet name, Salco, long after the war. Back then, you were just a little one and I would gently stroke your head and now I must preserve the story for history for my children. On April 15th, 1941, in Sarajevo, German planes flew over the break of dawn, announcing with their deadly cargo the arrival of World War II to Sarajevo.

10:27What drew them the most was the massive copper dome of Jewish Temple, barely 30 steps from your crib. The German rule the skies, circling and bombing until nightfall.

10:48While I was interviewing Salah, he produced this letter. His daughter, Christina, says he hardly ever shows it to anyone. It's very special to him. But he agreed to share some of it with us for this BBC programme. The Cabillos did manage to escape Sarajevo, even though they were living only metres away from the Gestapo. Vladimir Andola explains. Hadraga family helped the Cabillo family not only to hide in Sarajevo, but also to help them to go out from Sarajevo to the places where Italians were under the control. Italians, even though they were together with the Germans, with the Nazis and with the Ustasius fascists, they were not so brutal to the Jews.

11:34The Jews especially were trying to go on Italian territories in order to survive. The Hadraka family not only hide the Kaviglio family in Sarajevo, but also help them to move to Mostar, which was under the Italian occupation. It was very dangerous. If you hide the Jews or the Serbs, then you will be murdered too. With help from the Hardegas, the Cabiglio family escaped to Italian-controlled territory. When his family were away from Sarajevo, Joseph Cabiglio became a soldier, fighting with the partisans. In the letter, Joseph tells the story of how Salah's parents, Mustafa and Zeneba, continued to help him.

12:21I reach Hardegas' house, calling Mustafa. The neighbour angrily opened the window and asked, who's knocking on our yard door at this cell? At this moment, all the lights in the house turned on. Everyone got excited and in that encounter, we all cried. And I listened to Mustafa, who lifted me from the chair with the words, You are exhausted. Rest peacefully and without worry in my house. I wish you a peaceful night. The Gestapo officers, in white gloves, were exactly across from my bedroom window. They interrogated people they believe were enemies of Hitler, making them confess things they never did.

13:15Only a few thousand Jews survived the war, among them the Kabylio family, who returned to Sarajevo for a couple of years before emigrating to Israel. By the 1980s, Salih Hardiga was living in Mexico while his mother, Zeneba, and sister Sara were still in Sarajevo. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Joseph Cabello couldn't forget what the Hardigas had done for his family and he found someone who could help tell their story. Mordecai Paldiel headed the Righteous Among the Nations program at Yad Vashem, Israel's National Holocaust Memorial, the department that investigates and honors those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Second World War.

14:05Joseph Cabillo went to see him. He said, I heard there's a program for honoring people who save Jews. Here, I want to tell the story of the Hadega family. He gave us this testimony. I brought it before the committee, there was a special committee that discussed the stories and we told him, yes, we honoured the Hartiger family. He was very happy, Joseph. And so Saleh's mother, Zaneba, was honoured by the Israeli government and even visited the country to plant a tree in the garden commemorating those who helped Jews in the war. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom, and the trading floor.

14:49That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists, and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

15:18You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In this edition of Heart and Soul, you're hearing the extraordinary story of the Hardegas and the Kabylios, two families from Sarajevo, one Muslim and one Jewish, who helped each other in the darkest days of war. I'm Alex Strangway's Booth. For Sarajevo, 50 years later, conflict returned and the lives of the Hardegas and the Kabylios would become entwined once again, this time in reverse.

15:55In 1992, the Bosnian War broke out. The country split apart and the three ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats, were embroiled in bitter fighting. There were many terrible atrocities carried out against the Bosnian Muslims by the ethnic Serbs. And Sarajevo was besieged for four long years. Here's BBC reporter Martin Bell in 1992. Sarajevo has been through four or five terrible days. It's quieter now and the casualty figures are known. 400 dead among the defenders alone. The war is getting ever closer to the survivors. 300 ,000 of them trapped in an uninhabitable city at the onset of winter.

16:47Among those inhabitants were Saleh Hardiga's mother Zeneba and her new husband and daughter living in a 10th floor apartment on the Serbian side of the river that divides the city. Vladimir Anderla was seven when the siege began and paints a picture of how hard it was. Most of the time we were spending in the basement because of the shelling. If there is no shelling we had to collect some grass in order to make some meal. We didn't have water, food, electricity basically. The value of the human life back then was non-existent. Saleh was on a work trip to Italy when war broke out. His boss offered to send a car and a driver to fetch his mother to Italy.

17:31It was the beginning of the war. And my mother said, no, it is not possible. Why I go, it was two or three weeks no more. I said to my mother that it is not possible because normally every war in Bosnia is four or five years. Never is four or five weeks. No, she said to me that she don't like to go out. And this is the last time that I talked with my mother. and survival. After that, I lose connection. My grandmother didn't have one leg. She had a prosthesis. And she lived in the decimal. 10th floor. 10th floor. Nobody can cross. This was one river who decided left and the other side. And my mother was the side of the serfs.

18:30I cannot send something to help, no. They passed three or four years of the war. Who knows how? Sala says she never told him anything about how she survived during the siege. She never, never touched this period of his life. In the end of the war, the Jews saved my mother from Sarajevo. If you didn't quite catch that, Salah said that at the end of the war, the Jews saved his mother from Sarajevo. And here's how it happened. In Israel, Mordecai Paldil was listening to the news. The radio said there's been a terrible shelling in Sarajevo. I mean, mayhem, chaos. The Serbs from the hills over Sarajevo, they were shelling the city, Sarajevo.

19:26So I said, oh my God, but Zineba is living there. I wonder what's happening to her. So Mordecai called Joseph Cabello's daughter, who lived in Jerusalem. She told him that she'd been in touch with Zineba and she was struggling, in need of medicine, and she wanted to escape. But how could Mordecai help her do that? Well, back in Sarajevo, the Jewish humanitarian society, Labene Valencia, of which Vladimir Arndela is now president, was helping on the ground during the siege. Labene Valencia made a crucial role in helping Sarajevans to survive. We were one of the biggest formentarian organisations where we had soup kitchen providing 300 meals per day for the people of Sarajevo.

20:14And among those they were helping was the Hardega family. My name is Lebiba Dzeko. I am married to Amir Djerkou. His mother was born as Aisha Hardega. On a peaceful Sunday morning in Sarajevo, I've come to meet Saleh Hardega's cousin, Lebiba Djerkou. Lebiba's mother-in-law was one of the children hiding in the house during the war when the Hardegas helped the Kabylios. Lebiba was a newlywed in her early 20s when the siege of Sarajevo began. And she says her mother-in-law often talked about the close-knit family in World War II and how they decided to help the Kabylios. Brothers were together all the time.

21:05They worked together, they were traders. And women were together in the house, they had the same friends. They were real sisters. And in Hardaga's family, brothers decided about everything together. They all decided to help Kabilio's family. And it was because of that help given to the Kabilios that assistance came from Labene Valencia in the siege of Sarajevo. My mother-in-law gets some phone call from Jewish community and they gave offer to her that they can help her, help her family. And she accepted. The Jewish community had some special status. They had good relation with all people in Bosnia.

22:06Labiba remembers when the offer came from Israel to help Saleh's mother escape. because back in Israel, Mordecai Paldil had been hard at work. He'd heard that a convoy was about to leave Sarajevo, but they were only taking Jews. I said, hold everything. We have a law in Israel that anyone who has been recognised as the righteous among the nations is entitled to live in Israel. But with Zainiba there was no problem because she was honoured as a righteous. But the problem was her husband and daughter were not. So Mordecai started to call people in the government. So I picked up the phone and I got in touch with the minister of absorption.

22:52And he sent me over a letter and a signature, we guarantee the reception of the whole family. And I said, all right, get him out. And indeed, Labiba says it wasn't only Zeneba they offered to help. That letter, offering help to the whole Hardiga family, was taken literally. Jewish community gave offer to my mother-in-law, if we want all of us to move from Sarajevo and go when we want, they can help us to go out from Sarajevo. But we didn't want to go, we stayed here. Lebiba, who had a newborn baby, decided to stay, despite the continuing siege. And so, with much publicity, Zeneiba and her family were taken out of Bosnia to Israel.

23:45They arrived on February 10, 1994 at the airport. I was there. It was like breaking news. Muslim family, the whole family, got out of Sarajevo in a civil war and brought to Israel. And everybody was happy. Here's Saleh and his daughter, Christina. I believe that he don't leave one day more. Like the last days where she was in Sarajevo before she moved to Israel, my grandmother was really like a skeleton. She was really thin. She looked really bad. And what my father said is that if she stayed more days, she would probably die. But after three, four months of living in Israel, she... Completely other woman.

24:32She was happy. She was really... She's OK.

24:4330 years on, back in Sarajevo, what are relations like now between the two communities? Just coming up to one o 'clock on Friday in Sarajevo, people have been gathering really for the last half an hour in this courtyard around the most beautiful fountain in this mosque. People are washing their feet in the icy cold water that's come straight out of the ground and they're getting ready for the prayers. It's very peaceful considering how many people are here.

25:17We live together with differences. This is Mohamed Jusic, a diplomat and one of Bosnia's most important Muslim leaders. Religious relations are deep, deep in our identity, deep in our society. And this image that we have of ourselves is that we are open society, that we are somebody who is inclusive, and that this place belongs to everybody, not only to one faith or nationality. But he says the centuries-old relationship between Jews and Muslims in Bosnia is under pressure because of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel's subsequent military actions in Gaza. And so the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the head of Sarajevo's Jewish community have taken a public stance of unity.

26:10This is not something that is war between Muslims and Jews. So why paint this as a picture of war between Muslims and Jews? And please don't bring that war here. Every life matters and it's worth the same in God's eyes. Let us make commitment that we will protect each other like we did in this long history of Jewish-Muslim relations.

26:35And as for Sarajevo's small but vibrant Jewish community, Vladimir Andalas says taking a stand together has never been more important. As a Jewish person here, I work freely. People know that I am Jew here and I don't have any kind of problems. But comparing to the period before, three years ago, I can say that it's a different situation now. It's slowly getting worse. But luckily for us, we have a huge support from the institutions, from the Islamic community, and this is the way how we are trying to balance things when it comes to the Sarajevo. You've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service and the first of a two-part series looking at Jewish-Muslim relations in different parts of the world.

27:25The producer was me, Alex Strangway's booth. The editor was Anna Stewart, with research by Katie Harris. It was a CTVC production.

27:55every week for my show, Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists, and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions on how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.