Khaled Abdul-Wahab

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Khaled Abdul-Wahab (1911-1997) became the first Arab nominated for the Israeli Righteous Among the Nations, when he was nominated in January, 2007, by Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Abdul-Wahab, the son of an aristocratic family, was 32 when German troops occupied Tunisia in November, 1942. Tunisia was then home to approximately 100,000 Jews. Under the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies, they were forced to wear Star of David badges and were subject to fines and having their property confiscated. More than 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died; another 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.

Abdul-Wahab, an interlocutor between the Nazis and the population of the coastal town of Mahdia, heard that German officers were planning to rape a local Jewish woman, Odette Boukhris; instead, he hid her, her family, and several other Jewish families, about two dozen in all, at his farm outside town for four months, until the occupation ended.

Satloff, who had been searching for records of Arabs who had saved Jews from the Holocaust, was first informed of Abdul-Wahab by Odette Boukhris' daughter, Annie Boukhris, who had also been hidden by Abdul-Wahab at the age of 11; shortly after recording her testimony, she died at age 71. Satloff then went to Mahdia and confirmed the story.

Although nominated, Abdul-Wahab still has to be approved by the Yad Vashem commission that grants the honor. Yad Vashem has conferred the honor on more than 70 Muslims, but thus far no Arab had ever been nominated. Most of the Muslims who received the award are Albanians.