In two separate ceremonies, the city of Los Angeles marked Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). At one, attended by Israeli Consul-General in LA Ehud Danoch and LA Mayor Antonio Villarigosa, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a native Austrian, recounted stories about the war that he had heard from his mother about how she witnessed the murder of Jews in her native land.
At a second ceremony, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, a Tunisian Muslim, Khaled Abdul Wahab, posthumously became the first Arab to be honored as a Righteous Gentile. The ceremony was attended by Abdul Wahab’s daughter, the daughter of one of the men he saved, Mayor Villarigosa, Tunisian Ambassador Mohammed Nejib Hakhana, and Robert Satloff, whose book first brought Abdul Wahab’s story to light.
At a second ceremony, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, a Tunisian Muslim, Khaled Abdul Wahab, posthumously became the first Arab to be honored as a Righteous Gentile. The ceremony was attended by Abdul Wahab’s daughter, the daughter of one of the men he saved, Mayor Villarigosa, Tunisian Ambassador Mohammed Nejib Hakhana, and Robert Satloff, whose book first brought Abdul Wahab’s story to light.