Abdelkader Mesli

Abdelkader Mesli (, ʿabd ʾal-Qādir Maslī; 190221 June 1961) was an Algerian Sunni imam and resistance member during the Second World War. Through his actions at the Grand Mosque of Paris, at the Fort du Hâ, and within the Army Resistance Organization (ORA), he contributed to the rescue of several hundred Jews from the Holocaust. He also extended assistance to escaped African soldiers. Having survived Dachau, he returned to France after the war but died in relative obscurity.

His actions were rediscovered long after his death, in the early 21st century. Historians' estimates of the number of Jews he saved vary, but they range between 500 and 1600.

Biography

Birth and rise to the imamate Abdelkader Mesli was born in 1902 in Khemis, French Algeria. At the age of 17, he left his native country for Metropolitan France and arrived in Marseille. He worked as a docker, carpenter, mine worker and salesman.

Second World War, Resistance and deportation When the Second World War started, Mesli got involved with Kaddour Benghabrit, rector of the mosque, in rescuing Jews by issuing false certificates of Muslim faith.

In 1942, Mesli was sent to Bordeaux as Muslim chaplain at the Château du Hâ by Kaddour Benghabrit after Mesli was suspected by the German authorities. He organized escapes there and continued to issue false certificates, despite the suspicions of the Kommandatur. In this capacity, he handled forged documents and provided shelter for escaped African soldiers.

Despite extensive interrogations and torture, he did not denounce any resistant comrades. He then resumed his activity as an imam at the mosque of Bobigny (near Paris) and took care of the Muslim cemetery of Bobigny.

He died on 21 June 1961. On 15 October 2021, the forecourt in front of the Grand Mosque of Paris bears his name. A street has been named Abdelkader Mesli in Bobigny in his honor.

On 16 October 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron gave an hommage to Abdelkader Mesli. Regarding his actions, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, declared: My illustrious predecessors have engraved in the national memory a certain idea of humanism. The first rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, along with Imam Abdelkader Mesli, helped save Jewish people from Nazi barbarism.

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