This is the story of how Dervis Korkut, a Moslem in Sarajevo, saved the Sarajevo Haggada (click here), and then Mira Papo Solomanova, a Jew, from the Nazis, and how Mira then saved Dervis' daughter, Lamija from the Serbs. Click here for the details in the New Yorker, here, here and here for other documentation on the Internet.
In 1942, Naza Commander Yohan Fortner arrived at the Bosnian National Museum in Sarajevo demanding the museum's greatest literary treasure, the Sarajevo Hagadda. Dervis Korkut, Muslim, librarian, intellectual anti-fascist, and anti-communist, hid the book. He told Fortner that the book had already been taken by the Nazis. It's not that he risked his life to save a book, it's that he devoted his life to books, ideas, culture, and humanity.
In April, 1942, Dervis protected a young Jewish woman, Mira Papo Solomanova, by bringing her home and passing her off as "Amira," a Muslim servant, a cousin of his young wife, Servet, to help care for their infant son, Munib. They risked their lives to save another person.
In 1994, in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel, Mira documented how Dervis and Servet saved her life.
Dervis passed away in 1969. (While we originally reported that Servet had passed away in 1998 we now know that) Servet lives in Sarajevo, and we hope, in good health. In 1999 their daughter Lamija evacuated her children in advance of the collapse of Kosovo. Lamija and her husband were sent by the Serbs to a refugee camp. Lamija went to the Jewish community in Kosovo with a photocopy of Mira's testimony. Four days later she and her husband were flown to Tel Aviv and reunited with their children, and Mira's Israeli son, Davor Bakovic.
If this story is filmed, Harrison Ford should play Dervis, to Angleina Jolie's Mira, and Uma Thuman's Servet. Robert DiNiro should direct and play both Munib Korkut, and Davor Balkovic.
Regardless of whether or not this story makes it to the silver screen, the world needs more Dervis Korkuts, more Mira Papo Salomanovas, and fewer Yohan Fortners.
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Ms. Servet Korkut born Luzha in Gjakova-Kosovo on November
20 th 1924, wife of the late Mr. Dervish Korkut,
is alive and she lives is Sarajevo - Kosevsko Brdo - Antuna Hantija st. no. 31
Dukagjin Rozhaja, Ms Korkuts nephew
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