The Grand Mosque of Paris

By Deborah Durland DeSaix, Karen Gray Ruelle,

Book cover of The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust

Book description

When the Nazis occupied Paris, no Jew was safe from arrest and deportation. 

Few Parisians were willing to risk their own lives to help. Yet during that perilous time, many Jews found refuge in an unlikely place--the sprawling complex of the Grand Mosque of Paris. Not just a place of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Grand Mosque of Paris as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Anti-semitism is on the rise again, but not many kids’ books provide examples of how to stand against it. I was excited to discover this little-known story of how Arabs did just that. During the Nazi occupation of France, Muslims used the Grand Mosque of Paris to hide Jews and smuggle them out to freedom, right in front of oblivious Nazi soldiers. Arabs and Jews are so often portrayed as enemies, but this book defies that stereotype as well. 

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