Dec 16, 2010 - David Weinberg from the St. Louis Beacon has written an excellent article covering the work of the Eye Contact Foundation.
"Ali Sheqer Pashkaj was born in Puka, a tiny Albanian village of 30 families. His father, a devout Muslim, owned a small general store that sold food and provisions.
One afternoon during World War II a group of German soldiers passed by the store. They were escorting a young Jewish male who was to be shot, and Ali's father invited the soldiers into the store for a drink. In between his generous pours of red wine, he slipped a note to the young man inside a piece of melon. The note said to run and hide in the woods.
When the Germans discovered the boy missing they put Pashkaj against a wall. "Four times they put a gun against his head," Ali remembers. The soldiers threatened to burn down the village but Pashkaj denied everything. Eventually the Germans left and Pashkaj recovered the boy and sheltered him in his home for two years.
Ali Sheqer Pashkaj's story is part of a photography exhibit on display at Temple Emanuel, a reform Jewish synagogue in Creve Coeur. Accompanying this oral history is a portrait of Ali, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a dark mustache seated at table. Spread out in front of him are old photographs of his father and the Jewish boy their family saved.
