Abdelkader Mesli

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Abdelkader Mesli (Arabic: عَبْد ٱلْقَادِر مَسْلِي, ʿabd ʾal-Qādir Maslī; 1902 – 21 June 1961) was an Algerian Sunni imam and resistance member during the Second World War. Through his actions at the Grand Mosque of Paris, at the Fort du Hâ, and within the Army Resistance Organization (ORA), he contributed to the rescue of several hundred Jews from the Holocaust. He also extended assistance to escaped African soldiers. Having survived Dachau, he returned to France after the war but died in relative obscurity. His actions were rediscovered long after his death, in the early 21st century. Historians' estimates of the number of Jews he saved vary, but they range between 500 and 1600. Abdelkader Mesli was born in 1902 in Khemis, French Algeria. At the age of 17, he left his native country for Metropolitan France and arrived in Marseille. He worked as a docker, carpenter, mine worker and salesman. In the early 1930s, he was appointed imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, a position he held on a voluntary basis.