Si Kaddour Benghabrit

Si Kaddour Benghabrit was born in Sidi Bel Abbès into a prominent Tlemcenian intellectual family. After studying at the University of al-Qarawiyyin, he achieved international acclaim as a diplomat, musicologist, and translator, founding the iconic Grand Mosque of Paris in 1926 to honor the tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers who died in World War I.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris (1940–1944), Benghabrit utilized the labyrinthine subterranean chambers of the Mosque to shelter hundreds of Jewish refugees and resistance fighters, providing them with counterfeit Muslim certificates of birth to save them from deportation to Nazi death camps, an act of supreme humanitarian heroism.