Abdelkader Ben Ghabrit (Arabic: عبد القادر بن غبريط; 1 November 1868 – 24 June 1954), commonly known as Si Kaddour Benghabrit (سي قدور بن غبريط) was an Algerian religious leader, translator and interpreter who worked for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the first rector of the Great Mosque of Paris.
He participated in the Algeciras Conference of 1906 and the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Fes of 1912. He headed a French diplomatic mission to Mecca in 1916 to facilitate the Hajj and convince Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca to break with the Ottoman Empire and join the Allies in exchange for the recognition of his caliphate by the Maliki Muslims of the French colonial Empire.
During the Occupation of France, he hid and saved Jews in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris. Alongside Abdelkader Mesli, he joined the resistance and protected numerous victims, sometimes estimated to be more than a thousand.
A sophisticated man and frequenter of Parisian salons, Ben Ghabrit was dubbed “the most Parisian Muslim”. During World War II and after the fall of France, Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit worked to protect his people, both Muslims and Jews, arranging for forged papers for an estimated 100 Jews to certify them as Muslim. He also arranged to have Jewish refugees hidden in the mosque at times of German roundups, and transported by the Resistance out of the country. Also he saved the lives of at least five hundred Jews, including that of the Algerian singer Salim Halali, making the administrative staff grant them certificates of Muslim identity, which allowed them to avoid arrest and deportation. In addition, during the war in France, many Muslims joined the French Resistance movement.
In a documentary entitled Mosque of Paris, the forgotten, produced for the show Racines de France 3 in 1991, Derri Berkani reports that it was the Algerian partisans, mainly composed of workers, who had led the Jews to the Paris Mosque for protection. The mission of these Algerian partisans was to rescue and protect the British SOE agents and find them shelter. The Partisans subsequently provided assistance to Jewish families, from the families they knew, or at the request of friends, by accommodating them in the mosque, waiting for papers to be provided to get them to the Zone libre or cross the Mediterranean to the Maghreb.
The figures for the number of Jews saved by staying in the Mosque of Paris during this period differ according to the authors. Annie-Paule Derczansky, president of the Association des Bâtisseuses de paix, states that according to Albert Assouline, as stated in the Berkani film, 1600 people were saved. On the other hand, Alain Boyer, former head of religious affairs in the French Ministry of Interior, has stated that the number was closer to 500 people.
For his contributions, Ben Ghabrit was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He is buried in a reserved area to the North of the Mosque of Paris, according to the Maliki rite. The Bâtisseuses de Paix, an association of Jewish and Muslim women working for inter-community harmony, submitted a petition in 2005 to Yad Vashem’s Council to recognize that the Mosque of Paris saved many Jews between 1942 and 1944, and that Yad Vashem should thus recognize Si Kaddour Benghabrit as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. This request remains unfulfilled, as no survivors have been found; apparently the mosque had worked with false passports.
Si Kaddour Benghabrit’s efforts to save Salim Halali and other Jews are depicted in the French drama film Les hommes libres (Free Men, 2011) film, directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi and released in 2011. He is played by French actor Michael Lonsdale. Si Kaddour Benghabrit also inspired Mohamed Fekrane in his short film Together, released in 2010. The role of the imam is played by actor Habib Kadi.